6e994e-c9c6-59d3-8fbc-50ecb668d36c">
HarperCollinsPublishers 77−85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
© One Mode Productions Limited 2014
5 Seconds of Summer assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work
All band photography courtesy of Liz Hemmings with the exception of Image1, Image2, Image5, Image10, Image13, Image20, Image27, Image36, Image45, Image62, Image70, Images74, Image80, Image96, Image129, back endpaper © Tom van Schelven
Illustrations and doodles on cover, front endpaper, Image9, Image21, Image48, Image99 by Rich Andrews; cartoon strip on Images 64, 65, 66, 67 by Chris Rowland
All textures and background images © shutterstock.com
While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced herein and secure permissions, the publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in any future edition of this book.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green
Source ISBN: 9780007594894
Ebook Edition © September 2014 ISBN: 9780007594900
Version: 26-09-2014
THANK YOU!
This book wouldn’t have been possible without our amazing fans, who have got us where we are today. The ones who stand for hours on end to watch us play, the ones who would support us four dudes through thick and thin. You are our everything.
Thanks also to Matt Allen.
Contents
Copyright
Introduction
Part 1: Hey, Let’s Make A Band!
Part 2: Brand New World
Part 3: Out of Our Limit
Part 4: Another Day and I’m Somewhere New
Part 5: The Fans
About the Publisher
What you′re about to read is pretty much our story so far. It really does seem like only last week we played our first gig at the Annandale Hotel in Sydney. Since then we′ve been given the opportunity to turn into the people and musicians we wanted to be. The people who gave us the opportunity were the fans. The ones who stand for hours on end to watch us play, the ones who would support us four dudes through thick and thin. Everything goes back to the fans. You guys are our everything.
So this book is like a thank you. We want everyone to know the story of how four Western Sydney teenagers picked up their instruments and dreamt of being one of the biggest bands in the world. There′s also some embarrassing photos of us dicking around and some facts that we didn′t even know. So we hope you enjoy it!
Love cal, luke, ash and mike x
Sent from my iPhone
Calum
Torn in Two
How 5SOS came to be is a pretty crazy story ...
When we started the band, the dream was to get guitars back on the radio because that’s the music we grew up with. The love of rock and punk music brought Michael, Luke, Ashton and me together when we were at school, but when I was younger my life could have gone one of two ways. I really loved football and I wanted to become professional. My favourite team was Liverpool and I dreamt of walking alongside their captain, Steven Gerrard. But as soon as I discovered music I knew it was the only thing I wanted to do.
I was always the ‘sporty’ one in my family. When we were at school, my older sister, Mali, was the musical one. I used to listen to her sing at school and at home and wonder why I was never as talented or as good as her at music. I definitely gained a lot of my love of music from her; she would blast R&B out of her bedroom.
We were a middle-class family. Mum worked in superannuation and Dad had a job with Coca-Cola, so it wasn’t the most glamorous life. Mum and Dad weren’t very musical but they could both sing. I remember my dad singing along to The Proclaimers out the back and not being able to get to sleep because of it. But I was extremely grateful – my parents gave me everything I needed with what little we had.
I was a shy kid at school. I never really spoke to anyone I didn’t know or make too much eye contact. It took me a while to come out of my shell, sort of – joining the band helped a lot. Despite my shyness back then, though, I made friends at school, but there were only a few close ones that knew a lot about me.
The only real classes I liked were PE and Music. I loved anything to do with sport. PE was always great and I’d like to think that I was good at English, but Music was kind of an escape. That was the class I looked forward to the most. In music I really felt myself. I always found time to play terribly on different instruments.
As a pupil, I think I was quite well behaved – but that changed a bit when I moved up into high school at Norwest and every single teacher’s comment on every report card read: ‘Calum has potential, but he gets distracted too easily.’ That was my life summed up in a sentence. As I grew older my grades got worse and worse. No matter how hard I studied I just didn’t excel. Later, there was a certain point when the band started where my grades went down the drain and my parents weren’t happy at all. It’s not cool to suck at school, but by then I didn’t really care about anything other than the band.
Hanging with the Band
I first met Michael