She Wants Revenge
Interview with Adam 12
Words: Marshall Dickson

Twas the night before Halloween and all through the south, groovie ghoulies were stirring and dancing down the house…  Was this Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights?  Nope, just the sole Florida performance of dark electro-pop duo She Wants Revenge at Orlando’s Club Firestone.  I caught up with Adam 12, keyboardist, multi-instrumentalist & general musical wunderkind from his tour bus a couple days later in Houston, TX, to delve into the mystery of what makes their music sound hauntingly familiar, yet completely original.

REAX: Adam, your music takes inspiration from a multitude of artists and genres.  How do you take that impetus, and mold it into your own distinctive sound?
Adam 12: Growing up listening to so much different music, it just made its way into our sound.  We are a little older than many of the bands coming out now, so were around when bands like The Cure and Depeche Mode were breaking out.  Justin (Warfield, vocalist) and I are inspired by artists like them. It’s who we are.  You can tell the difference between a band that was put together by someone at a record label, handed Duran Duran’s Greatest Hits, put in a room for a week with a producer and told “We want you to write songs that sound like this.”  Kids are more intelligent than people want to give them credit for, and they can hear that.  Nobody comes up to us and say “I love you because you sound like such-and-such band,” they say “I’m going through this really weird relationship, and I totally connect with your music.”  The people who come to our shows and buy our records tell us more about the feeling they get from our records.  It’s about that girl who comes up to us after a gig and says “I met my boyfriend on the dance floor listening to one of your songs and now your album is the theme to our relationship,” or “I couldn’t have made it through my messy break-up or divorce if I didn’t have your record.”  That’s what it’s all about for us: creating music that’s honest and having it connect with people.  It means the world to us.

REAX: The dark dance club sound of She Wants Revenge is a progressive evolution from the hip-hop beats you made earlier in your career for artists such as Dr. Dre & Kenna.  Justin can definitely spit a rhyme, as heard on his prior solo work and cameos with bands such as Placebo and Kruder & Dorfmeister.  Are there plans for a return to your hip-hop roots, possibly in a side project?
Adam 12: Justin and I have been involved in a lot of different projects prior to this band, not just hip-hop.  He’s done everything from hip-hop to trip-hop to rock.  I come from making hip-hop, but I also make music that sounds like Bjork and more ethereal things.  I worked on the second album by my good friend Esthero, which is very beautiful electronic music.  We have amassed quite a collection of hip-hop beats while working in the studio & have a whole plan for next year, including signing a couple bands to our label, and producing more beats for hip-hop and pop artists.  When we get off tour, he’s going to spend as much time as he can at home with his newborn baby, and then we head back into the studio to begin work on these new projects.

REAX: Your music has taken a definitely darker turn on the new record, "This is Forever."  As your career progresses, do you take it further into the shadows, ala Sisters of Mercy, or will there be a happier time where you bring it back into the light?
Adam 12: When we made the first album, I don’t think we really knew who we were as a band.  When it started, we were just making music.  I had never been in a band, and Justin and I didn’t even know we would become a band.  We made a song one day, and liked the way it made us feel.  Then we made another, and another.  Seventy five percent of what became the first album was done before we got our record deal.  After touring and living with the album for so long, we toured for a year and a half, you start to figure out what tones and sounds you really enjoy.  We found we really dug the darker stuff, like “Sister,” “She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not” and “Tear You Apart”.  Without actually talking about where we wanted the new record to go, it just naturally moved in that direction.