Long awaited new interview with Hayley Williams for L’Odet has been published along with awesome pictures taken by Lindsey Byrnes. Hayley talks family, divorce, Paramore and forgiving herself. Click here to read it. For more photos visit our Facebook page.
HAYLEY WILLIAMS: I still can’t believe Pangaea is closing.
CARIANN: It’s this weekend! I can’t believe it, either. The owner, Sandra, is retiring. She’s in her seventies and this store is her baby. I hope she’s going to travel!
HW: Wow. That is crazy to think about, just in terms of where you and I are at now and what life might look like. At seventy it’s like, if there are things you haven’t done yet that you want to do, I guess you just…do them. Wow. Being in her position would be like me leaving the band behind. I can’t even imagine that.
C: So you think you’ll stay in Paramore for a long time?
HW: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think it will look like it did. I don’t think it could look like it has looked, you know? There were just so many yeses to everything — especially when we were kids. When we were kids it was like, we’d never even seen or heard of some of the opportunities before. Half of it was curiosity and half of it was just wide-eyed ‘let’s see what this experience feels like.’ Obviously we wanted the band to succeed. But I don’t even know if we really grasped the concept of succeeding. It was more like we just went through the motions every day, and if the shows are really magical, then that’s why you do it, you know? Now — especially after this album cycle, too — I would never do things the way we did before “After Laughter”. With “After Laughter”, we kind of said no to everything.
C: You seem like a totally different band.
HW: Oh, thank you. We wanted it to! Zac coming back was a big part of the aesthetic shift, but I think in terms of our business minds — you know, that’s the other thing — growing up in a band and it actually working out, it becomes less of a band and more of a brand. I was telling Zac this the other day. We were working on a collab with somebody and he was like, “Are we sure we should be doing this? Because we don’t have an album coming out.” The truth is there are two parts to the band. One part is what you wear on a t-shirt, which is basically the name. And the other part is the band, which is us! And the band is what it’s about. I told Zac that if all three of us feel good about it, we do it. In moving forward, if the three of us are happy, then we will just do whatever we want to do. If that means collaborating with each other, bringing other friends in to collaborate — there are seven band members when we tour. We’re all friends and we all make music in different parts, together. So I feel like, yes, I want to be in Paramore. I never want to have to put out a press release that says we’re over or that I quit or that we’re taking a hiatus, which is essentially a marketing ploy these days. I would rather it just be. It just is a part of each of our DNA. If we choose to move into it as a brand and put a name on these songs and make a new t-shirt, then awesome. But I’ve been in a band with them since I was 12; I don’t think the band is going anywhere. As long as we’re friends, the band just is. It’s just in us.
C: That’s really freeing, though. To be able to do what you want and not have any rules.
HW: It is. I used to hold it so tight. The band used to be what I thought was the only way I could do anything. For instance, when I was a kid I wanted to leave Mississippi so bad.
C: What part of Mississippi?
HW: Meridian. Have you ever been through there?
C: My former partner’s family lived in Jackson, so I was there a lot for holidays. It’s a very…interesting place.
HW: Right? There’s nothing taking me back there, but I just wanted to get out. Honestly, I had a few really great friends, and we were kids. There weren’t like, pressing life issues other than my parents’ divorce. And, well, things I’m just now realizing…actually did fuck me up. [Laughs]
