over and over – I even got a Guitar Hero drum kit. I always thought that shredding it on Guitar Hero – that’s when you play loads of notes, super fast – was more impressive than shredding it on a real guitar.
When it came to playing the real thing, oh dude, it was so hard! At first I tried singing lessons, but I hated them. Then I tried playing the piano. Eventually, when I was 11, Mum and Dad bought me a crappy acoustic guitar from a shop down the road, but when I started taking lessons, I nearly quit straightaway. I was like, ‘No way, this is so tough.’ My guitar teacher, David, kept encouraging me and I eventually got over my frustrations of not being able to play anything. Now I’m in our band I’m so glad I stuck with it. Imagine if I’d given up and never picked up the guitar again?
The first song I learned from start to finish was that awful tune ‘Ode to Joy’ – you probably would have heard it at school. After that I got to play Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’, but really badly. Then came the basic rock classics, like Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’. I drove everyone mad playing that, but it soon paid off and after a year of practising, I got an electric guitar when I was 11 years old. It felt cool to bash out songs really loud on the amp.
I was getting into some great bands back then. Guitar Hero tuned me into some of the older rock groups like Led Zeppelin, which then directed me to Blink-182 and Green Day.
But it was the American band All Time Low that got me really excited. I loved their songs. They mixed pop and punk so perfectly and they looked like they were having a great time, all the time. Alex Gaskarth, their lead singer, had such a powerful voice, which worked so well with some seriously infectious guitar hooks. I was sold on them straightaway. He was an absolute dude, too. I wanted to be in a band because of them; I guess I started singing because of Alex as well – he was a hero to me at that time.
Up until Year 7 I was an absolute geek. I’d had a few friends, other geeks, but other people at school didn’t really like me that much. Then I manned up a little: I got myself a girlfriend and I met Luke in a Year 7 orientation day at Norwest. I also became friends with Calum. We had known each other since Year 3, but we hadn’t really hung out that much. It wasn’t long before we were all really close.
It was music that brought us together, because, I admit it, when I first met Luke I figured, ‘He’s too cool. He’s the type of guy I can’t be friends with.’ He thought he was great (but he wasn’t!). But Calum was really nice, he was the guy who everyone liked. I guess I was the guy who everyone didn’t. I also looked a little bit different to everyone else. I wanted to dress like Lil Wayne, but at the same time I wanted to look like Alex Gaskarth. I was kinda confused.
There was also a period, just before we’d hit it off, where Luke and I hated one another for a bit. It was over a girl at school. He’d really liked her and I’d liked her, too, but I’d asked the question first. For a while Luke was always being rude to me, but once we started talking music together, we got over it. But Luke was cool. I knew he was really into his music because he had been making cover versions of songs by people like Jason Mraz and posting them on YouTube. They were OK – not great – but there was something interesting about them.
Suddenly, Luke, Calum and I spent all our time together, hanging out in Music class. When we weren’t in lessons, we were in the music room playing riffs together. All of us had guitars, so we would learn songs and mess around. When it came to the school’s annual show, Live At Norwest, Luke and Calum did a song together. I went on my own and did a medley of songs by the band Panic! At the Disco. I really liked it, but I only got a 7/10 score. Still, in my head it was amazing.
Then one day in school, I turned round to the others and said, ‘Dude, what if we started a band like All Time Low?’ I thought it would be great if we could hang out and make real songs together; playing our guitars as loud as we could and writing records as iconic and vital as American Idiot or All Time Low’s Nothing Personal. They got excited and said, ‘Yeah, man, why not? It would be awesome.’ And the rest is history.
Ashton
I’ve Gone from Place to Place
One of the things I can tell you about growing up in Australia was that I never stayed in one place for too long. My dad left when I was two, and me and Mum moved around a bit, from home to home – sometimes we even lived in caravan parks. At times I had to meet new friends and get used to new homes, which was pretty tough.
Most of the time, we were in a place called Windsor, which was about an hour and a half out of Sydney. When I started at primary school, I was a good kid, but I used to get into trouble with the teachers loads because I was very loud. Every report card said the same thing: ‘Ashton gets distracted a lot. He should concentrate more.’ I guess I just wanted to be funny and I loved being the centre of attention.
Luckily I was pretty smart, otherwise I would have been in some serious trouble with Mum. She was kinda strict when it came to schoolwork and if I played up, or didn’t do well in classes, she wouldn’t stand for it. She could be pretty frightening sometimes, but I knew she was only doing it because she loved me and wanted what’s best for me.
Living with her was great, though; she encouraged me to do so many things away from school – stuff she thought would improve me as a person. I played football, which I loved, and I did acting classes. The one thing I was really good at was swimming, but it was hard work. As I got older and the training became more serious I used to swim seven days a week. I’d finish school in the afternoon and then walk to training. I’d come home really tired and then I’d have to get up early the next day to go swimming again. It was intense. Now the smell of chlorine makes me sick.
I tried to be good at everything I did when I was in primary school – that was my attitude. It’s the same now: whenever I go out and play a show with the band, I want to raise the bar, I want everyone to come away thinking, That’s a great band, or, That dude’s a great drummer. Back then, I wanted to be the best at all the classes. Except for Maths – I was absolutely awful when it came to numbers – English was pretty cool because I enjoyed writing stories. Later, when I went to high school, I loved Science. I thought it was fun because I could blow things up, cut cows’ eyeballs open and do other weird stuff.
At times it was hard for me and Mum because we were on our own. We didn’t have a lot of money and we’d struggle to eat from week to week at times. But that became a normal thing to me. I’d go to a friend’s house and they’d say, ‘What do you want for dinner?’ I’d tell them, ‘Oh I’m fine, I don’t want to intrude.’ I was used to living on a budget but that was my whole childhood. We did what we could to get by.
Mixtape ′94
One of my earliest musical memories happened when I was around seven or eight. I used to have a tape recorder and I would sit in my room and wait for my favourite songs to come on the radio. Then as soon as I heard a riff I liked or recognised, I would press ‘Record’ and tape the track, and at the end of the day I’d have a whole album full of stuff. It’s funny, we have a lyric on our single, ‘She Looks So Perfect’, which goes, ‘I made a mixtape straight out of ‘94.’ That line