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Music

I Went on a Date with My High School Crush: Taking Back Sunday's Adam Lazzara

We talked about underage drinking, Jay-Z and crossword puzzles.
Emma Garland
London, GB

All photos by Jake Lewis

Interviews and dates aren’t all that different, especially if, like me, you insist on only interviewing people that you have a massive crush on. Eventually, we thought it might be safer for all parties involved if we just called the interview a date from the start.

Hanging out with Adam Lazzara used to be my go-to answer whenever "What's your ideal date?" came up on a personal quiz I lifted off an email chain and reposted in a Myspace bulletin. But if somebody told 14-year-old me that, at some point in the next ten years, I'd actually be sitting and drinking coffee with the poster-boy of the 90s—the man who pioneered the side-fringe before Bieber could even talk, the frontman of Taking Back Sunday—the very thought of it would have made me snort-laugh and do a sick in my mouth.

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Yet there I was, being ushered into a booth of the Roundhouse cafe by his press officer, in a way that made us feel like a pair of 12-year-olds on a date that had to be chaperoned in case of heavy petting.

Mind you, he did almost remove a single sock and then talk about making out while I tried not to swoon right off my seat, so perhaps some oversight was completely necessary.

So, this location was chosen for us for feasibility and timing reasons, but if we were less constricted by such factors, where would you take me? I guess in this hypothetical situation you are, ideally, not married.
Ha. My go-to date spot is probably just a quiet little bistro type restaurant, because you want to feel fancy but not too fancy.

Fancy without the pressure, like eating truffles in your pants?
Right. Fancy where you don’t have to dress up funny or nothing.

On a date, it's good to talk about times when you were carefree and spontaneous, so you sound less like the boring wage slave that you've become. Let’s talk about being young! What was growing up like for you?
It was cool. There weren’t a lot of like-minded people where I grew up, it’s just kind of like a Southern town, but once I found my little group of friends we’d run around together, take our skateboards everywhere, you know.

You lived in New York for a long time, right?
It’s the best city in the world. I had a lot of fun there. I lived there from the time I was 18 to around 27, so it was a good run.

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Why did you leave?
I was having too much fun.

Of course you were. OK now I'm going to pivot to your early childhood so you feel like we're making a deeper emotional connection. So what was school like for you?
I loved English and literature and stuff like that.

What’s your favorite book?
Of all time? I know it’s a typical answer but Catcher in the Rye, man. When I was in high school, I’d carry it around with me everywhere. Like, you want to be Holden Caulfield when you’re that age. But man, my favorite of all time though, that’s tough. There’s one I recently re-read called Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk. It gets weird and a little bit graphic, but I like the way he writes.

Yeah his stuff is great. I really liked Diary and I feel like it doesn’t get enough love.
Yeah! It’s crazy because he put that one out and then he put another out not too long after and I think maybe there wasn’t enough time between books, you know? His most recent one, I haven’t picked it up, but the premise is so strange. Stuff like that I can’t read on tour because I’ll get…

An existential crisis?
Yes, exactly. Like, “Oh my god, what am I doing? I’m not helping the world…”

So what books have you brought on tour with you this time?
I have a book of crossword puzzles but that doesn’t count.

It sure doesn't. What else do you do to kill time on tour?
It depends on the day. We typically try to walk around, get a feel for the area, but it’s also like, you don’t want to go too far because you might be late for this thing you have to do for like a half hour and there’s things spread out throughout the day. Mostly, while we’re over here, we spend a lot of time looking for an internet connection so we can check in with home. That or play guitar and generally hang out. We’re really good at just hanging out.

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Is it good to be back with John Nolan and the original line-up?
Yeah, it is. I think everyone works together really well, but there’s also a certain level of comfort there that’s just pretty great. It feels like family, like they’re my brothers, you know?

So what were you all like in the beginning? What was the party to crossword ratio like?
We still do party, I guess, just in our own way. It’s a lot more calm. We don’t go out quite as much, but we did our fair share of that…

What happened the first time you ever got drunk?
OK, so I was living with my dad on the other side of town to my best friend Josh. Josh had an older sister who had just got married, but they were still fairly young. One day they drove to the other side of town to pick me up and when I got in the car he had filled up this Mountain Dew bottle with vodka. It was a small town and there wasn’t much to do, so I think we just went to a parking lot somewhere or a shopping place—just anywhere—and got real drunk. I remember coming home, opening the door and going straight into my room to lay down. And I’m doing this thing [waving his arms around to indicate being all drunk and woozy] and my dad being like, “Wait, are you?!" and then just not talking to me for a few days.

Oh no, not the silent treatment. That's the worst.
Yeah, the absolute worst. Also I think I was like 14 at this point, the same age as when I got my tongue pierced, and he just thought that was just the worst thing, like the world was going to end. He didn’t talk to me for a week after that.

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Do you still have any of your piercings?
No, not anymore. I got my eyebrow pierced, then my tongue, then I took the eyebrow out and got the lip and the nose and yeah. Then I discovered tattoos and it was like ohhh, here we go. Slippery slope.

What’s your favorite tattoo?
Of mine?

Yeah. Don’t you have “Dirty” tattooed on your boob?
Ha ha, yeah. That's for my buddy, Dirty. He has “Adam” written on him, too. There was this one night when our tour manager at the time showed us how to stick and poke, which is really basic, you just sterilize the needle, dip it in ink and put it on your skin. So we gave ourselves these smiley faces with a straight line for a mouth instead of a semi-circle. We called it the “Quiet Face Crew," that was our thing.

Where is it?
It’s on my ankle. You won’t be able to see it unless I take my socks off and it doesn’t look like that kinda place in here. It’s too clean.

Sadly, I'm probably obligated to discourage you from taking your clothes off in public. So, what was your first email address?
I don’t remember what the first one for me was, but the first one I used for the band was iwillendyouincorporated. In Good Will Hunting, there’s that scene where Matt Damon is talking to Robin Williams and he brings up Robin Williams’s wife and he says “I will end you” and I was like, man, that’s great. Oh also, Vanilla Sky. I had a big thing for Penelope Cruz for a while, and in that movie she says to Tom Cruise in this really cute falsetto voice, you know with her accent and all, “Fuck them." So my name was f-them-penelope, for a while.

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OK more date questions. What’s your favorite movie?
Fight Club. Even to this day. I hadn’t seen it for probably five or six years and I just rewatched it recently and the whole time it’s like I got lost. So it still holds up. True Romance too, which I think is one of the best. Those are probably my two favorites.

They both have that back and forth between intense love and intense violence.
Yeah. For some reason, I really like that. Ha.

So what’s your favorite TV show?
Have you ever seen House?

Featuring Hugh Laurie and his American accent?
He’s great! I had no idea. And then I saw him in an interview and I was thinking why is he doing a British accent? That’s how good he is.

The best thing about that show is that it’s just the same episode every single time. Like, someone will come in with a minor problem and House will be like nah, there’s something else going on here. Then whatever the thing is will get way worse and then someone will be like, "Oh my god it's Lupus" and then House proposes something ludicrous and saves the day.
But he’s not gonna save the day until there’s about ten minutes left in the episode, in that way where he’s like, "I’m horrible, but I’m BRILLIANT."

*lights go on in the cafe*

Jeez, way to kill our mood lighting, guys.
Yeah right? Blew it. Well, I guess we won’t be making out.

*lights go back out*

Or will we?

Don’t tease me. What happened in the last dream you had?
Last night I had a dream that I got a call from my uncle, just calling to see how I was doing. I also had a dream that I got home and all of my instruments were broken. And I remember it because I woke up and was trying to figure out what that meant. Because clearly it has to mean something, right? Most mornings I don’t remember them.

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Ok let me ask you a question I actually would ask people on dates: What’s your favorite Taking Back Sunday song?
Right now, probably "All The Way" (below). Just because I think it’s very different to anything we’ve done before and it’s also very much in-line with my music taste. Not to say that the other songs aren’t because they are too but on this one I feel like we’re really onto something.

Is there anything you would just flat out refuse to play?
When we’re in rehearsal we don’t do "Cute Without The E" or "You’re So Last Summer," like, ever. When we play them live they take on this life of their own that makes them so much fun, but when it’s just the five of us in a room it’s like ughhh okay here goes this one again! OH. Forest Gump. That’s another one of my favorite movies. I can’t watch it without crying. Every time.

What other movies make you cry?
Oh wow. Probably It’s A Wonderful Life. At the very end, you just can’t help it, like, come on. UP! is really hard to get through too.

The first 15 minutes are pretty killer.
Yeah! And then again at the very end they make you get sappy all over again.

I call that a sad sandwich.
That movie is such a sad sandwich. I feel bad for not in turn asking you questions, by the way.

That's cool, nobody wants to know about me when Adam Lazzara is in the building.

And then Adam Lazzara left the building, because he had to do other interviews and also this…

Follow Emma on Twitter: @emmaggarland