Good Charlotte revels in musical ‘Revival’

updated 10:18 a.m. ET April 4, 2007

LOS ANGELES - Many acts avoid reading reviews of their albums for fear one sour critic will reduce their noble efforts to rubble. Good Charlotte’s Benji Madden is not one of those artists.

“I read all the reviews,” he says. “I remember the first review I ever read about our band was, ‘They’ll be gone tomorrow; they’ll be gone quicker than they came.’ ”

Seven years and more than 9 million albums later, pop punkers Good Charlotte are not only still standing, but proudly proclaiming a return three years after the release of 2004’s “The Chronicles of Life & Death.”

“Ben said something a couple of weeks ago that I thought was really interesting,” says vocalist Joel of Benji, his twin brother and the group’s guitarist. “It was ‘I don’t know if we’re the most rock ’n’ roll band in pop or the most pop band in rock ’n’ roll.”’

Indeed, Good Charlotte straddles the line. The Madden brothers have all the requisite rocker markings: they sport multiple tattoos and piercings, they dress in all black, they chain smoke Camels; but their music and unfailing politeness give away their pop leanings. “You couldn’t really put us in a category right now; we’re kind of out there on our own,” says Joel.

“Good Morning Revival” celebrates that refusal to be pigeonholed. The first single, “The River,” is straight-ahead rock, while “Dance Floor Anthem” is an instantly infectious toe-tapper and “Keep Your Hands off My Girl” would sound at home on the latest album from the Killers or the Gorillaz. With “Revival,” the twins felt a small reinvention was in order “to keep ourselves interested,” says Benji. “We’ve been in this band since we were 16.”

Band returns to former producer
Additionally, Good Charlotte, which also includes bassist Paul Thomas, guitarist Billy Martin and drummer Dean Butterworth, needed to right itself after “Chronicles” sold only 1.1 million copies in the United States, well below the 3.4 million units moved by 2002’s “The Young and the Hopeless.” But the Maddens say they never thought “Chronicles” was anything other than a success, since it expanded the band’s international audience.

“The only time I was disappointed was when someone told me it was a failure,” Joel says dryly as they sit at a Starbucks at the very un-rock star time of 8:30 a.m. (Joel was heading to Disneyland to celebrate their 28th birthday a day early.)

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Paradoxically, to move forward the band looked to its past by enlisting Don Gilmore, who produced its self-titled 2000 debut.

“You find as the years go on and you have some success, people kind of start to say yes when they should say no,” says Benji.

From their past relationship with Gilmore, they knew he was no yes-man, and he quickly reminded them of that. The Maddens played Gilmore 40 new songs and he rejected every tune outright except for “Keep Your Hands off My Girl.”

“I was like, ‘Hmmm, you’ve written all these songs, and there’s only one good one. What’s wrong?’ ” says Gilmore, who’s also produced Linkin Park and Avril Lavigne. He decided the twins needed to get away from the distractions of Los Angeles and focus solely on the music. They headed to Vancouver, British Columbia, and “the first day they wrote a great song, and we were like, ‘OK, that wasn’t so hard,’ ” Gilmore says. “Every day yielded a song.”

Gilmore says the Maddens lock into something special creatively: “When just the two of them write, it’s a fast, quick thing. It’s not labored over.”

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