With millions of albums sold and having played over 500 shows, Lit don’t have to keep making music for a living, but they do. They want to. They left their old record label because they wanted to start fresh, and released a self-titled album in June. The casual rock fan will know Lit as the band that climbed all over Pamela Anderson (in the video for “Miserable” off their 1999 RCA debut “A Place in the Sun”). Their diehard fans will know them as the band with a little bit of pop and a little bit of hard rock, which remains true of their brand new record.

Guitarist Jeremy Popoff spoke with andPOP before an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

1. Doing a show like Leno, does anything like that make you nervous anymore?

I never get nervous. I get more nervous for my brother (the band’s singer, A.Jay) because he hates doing TV stuff. Other than that, I’m totally stoked every time.

2. The album is being described a “more serious” record. Why did you decide to go that route?

It wasn’t anything that we decided to do. We’ve never written any songs or records or whatever to try to achieve any sort of direction or concept. We just write what we’re feeling at the time. Between the four of us, we’ve went through a lot of shit over the last few years, various personal issues. It would be silly if you’re Lit and you’re doing your fourth record and I’m 32 years old and I don’t think it would be cool if I was writing Simple Plan songs.

3. How have you changed since the last album?

Personally, I had a kid. My son was born the day Atomic came out (he’s 2 and a half now). I’m just seeing the world a little differently now being a dad. The whole watching the demise of the music industry and seeing all the changes going on; some days you just want to kick ass. Sometimes you’re a little embarrassed of the career- you devote your whole life to something and then you’re there and you’re disgusted by the way it’s run and the kind of people that you’re surrounded with all the time. I guess I’m a little bit more jaded — I’m not jaded at all, but I think I get it now. I don’t let a lot of the shit bug me anymore. I know the drill.

4. Do you see this as a reinvention of the band?

I’d say it’s a fresh start. We wrote it, recorded it, and mixed it all in Orange County. We avoided the whole L.A. grind. We didn’t have any A&R guys or producers. As a result, we found ourselves being way more creative and we wrote way more songs that we normally would write for a record. We probably could have kept going and had enough stuff for another record too. Not to say that we won’t be back with a producer for the next record.

5. The song “Lullaby,” how important was it for you to include this track on the album?

I wouldn’t say it was important. It was a song I wrote for my son. It was just supposed to be for him. It wasn’t even for Lit or for the record. As it started to come together, everybody just felt it and felt that it was an important song. A.Jay has a little girl now too. He can relate it to it. It just felt right.

6. Do you think you’re surprising people by having a slower song like this?

It’s probably the most sweet and ballady of any of our other songs but we’ve had ballads on every record we’ve ever done. We’ve always left that door open.

7. You always do something interesting with your videos, and it’s no different this time. Tell me the importance to Lit of having such unique videos?

We’re big fans of MTV. We’re part of the MTV generation. I think videos should be entertaining. If they’re not, why make one?

8. Do you have a lot of input on the videos?

Oh yeah. The My Own Worst Enemy video and the Zip-Lock video, I wrote the treatments for. We usually have 5 or 6 directors submit treatments and then we go with the guy who gets it the most. Then we get together with them and we bounce ideas off each other.

9. What’s your favourite Lit video?

My favourite videos are the ones we make on our own. We have a DVD coming out and our friend, who directed and edited the DVD, has made 4 or 5 videos of different songs from the past 2 records. They’re just a ton of live footage put together. As far as the MTV videos that we made, probably the one we had the least to do with was the Miserable video with Pamela Anderson. We were in between tours and we were so crazy at the time. We didn’t have 5 minutes to ourselves. That was completely the director’s idea. The only thing we had to do was get Pam to be in the video. We shot it and went to Japan the next day. I loved that video because it’s so rare to see that.

10. A lot of people think of that video when they think of Lit and who better than her?

She’s such a great person, such a sweet girl, and so hot. To this day, if you ever see anything on Pamela Anderson, they show clips from that video because she looked so incredible.

11. Why’d you part from RCA?

We went to them and begged them to let us go. Every three or four weeks, we heard RCA was dropping 12 more bands and we used to sit there and cross our fingers and pray that we would be one of them. Everybody that was there when we signed with them in 1998 as of 2001, they were all gone. There was nobody left. We felt like if we’re going to start fresh with a new label, why would we want to do it here? If we’re going to start new we’re going to start new.

12. Were you happy to be away from a major or were you hoping to find another?

We had interest from several and it’s not like we said we absolutely won’t do it. But after talking to a few of them and seeing the state of all of them, it was scary. At the time we were talking to them, that’s when Nitrus came to us. We met with them and thought this is the perfect deal for us. If they pull this off, bands will be calling us everyday because it’s a great deal and very artist friendly.

13. How do you feel about BMG Heritage releasing the “Lit Platinum and Gold Collection”?

I fucking hate it. We tried to get them to stop it but we didn’t have any control of it. Instead we at least played ball a little bit and said, ‘if you’re going to release it and we can’t charge your mind, can you at least make it a little cooler for the fans?’ So we got to change a few photos that they used. We added a bonus track that nobody had heard before and an acoustic song. I know some our fans will buy it and we wanted them to feel like they weren’t getting ripped off.

14. Wasn’t this a slap in the face?

Yeah, it’s kind of a slap in the face but to me it’s less of slap in the face and more that they don’t give a shit if it’s good or bad for Lit. They just want to try and make more money.

15. How many more albums does Lit have in them?

The last thing we ever want to be is the band that is making another album that nobody wants to hear and are peddling it on our web site and just milking it. 999/1000 bands never make it or get a record deal. This is our third record deal, our fourth album, we’ve sold a couple million records, we’ve been all over the world. We’ve proved everybody wrong already. When we were in high school, everybody thought we were losers and bums and thought we should get real jobs and we’ve proved all those people wrong and then we proved ourselves right. Now, if I stop doing it tomorrow, I did it already. Now we’re doing it because we love it and because we do have more to say and because we love playing live. We’re going to keep doing it until we feel we’re done.






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