The Wonder Years coming to Sherman Theater
Punk band’s lead singer discusses Lansdale roots, latest box set and upcoming tour
The Wonder Years, a Philadelphia-based pop-punk/emo band with roots in Lansdale got their start in 2005 playing small punk shows before signing with legendary punk label, Hopeless Records.
Their music digs into influences from the catchy California pop-punk of Blink-182 and Pennywise to the melodic emo sounds of The Promise Ring and Jimmy Eat World. But the band also takes cues elsewhere, including the Allen Ginsberg poem “America” — which inspired the title and some of the lyrics/themes on their album “Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing.”
To celebrate the decade anniversary of “Suburbia …” and their previous album,
“The Upsides,” last year the band released an “Upsides/Suburbia” box set with plenty of extras and new songs for die-hard fans. They recently released a Christman song, “Threadbare,” and are playing a show at The Sherman Theater on Dec. 9.
We had a chance to catch up with lead singer Dan “Soupy” Campbell, to discuss growing up in Lansdale, punk rock, creating the “Upsides/ Suburbia” box set, and their upcoming/ currently unannounced US tour.
Jay Honstetter for The Morning Call: Tell me a little about growing up in Lansdale and how it shaped your musical upbringing and influenced your sound? Dan “Soupy” Campbell:
The thing about Lansdale was that it made playing music seem possible and realistic. When I first got interested in music, I didn’t understand how it was possible to go from playing bass in my bedroom to being Blink 182 (which, of course, we still aren’t and never will be. Hi Mark!). The first show I went to in Lansdale was Inkling at the Knights of Columbus. It was packed to the gills which, in retrospect, was probably 100 people … but the room was spilling over with energy and I was in awe of everyone singing along. It made the barrier for entry seem low but the bar for quality seem high. If you could play and write songs, you could be a part of it and if you could be a part of it, you could build off of it.
I know it’s been over a decade, but what was it like getting signed to Hopeless Records? It’s such a historic label with ties to some classic pop-punk bands.
In the year before we signed with Hopeless, all of the bands we toured with signed deals with labels of that size. Those labels passed on us. There was one more hardcore-leaning label that was interested but I didn’t feel like we were a fit on their roster.
I met with one of the bands on that label at a show and asked if they felt like we made sense there. He asked where we wanted to be and I said Hopeless. He said, ‘Then don’t sign here, wait until Hopeless wants to sign you.’ And we did.
Right after we released the first single from The Upsides, we got an email from Eric at Hopeless and everything fell into place from there.
What would you say are your biggest influences? I’d love to know what you grew up listening to and what you are listening to now?
Growing up, it was a mix of local stuff like The Minor Times and The Starting Line. If you were from our area, I was into it no matter the genre.
I’m not sure if that’s a Philly area thing or
of a live show, with cameras following it all.
“I just waited for it to go bad,” Jackson said. “I waited for the arguments to begin. I waited for the conflict to begin. I waited for the sense that they hated each other. I waited for all the things I had read in the books, and it never showed up.”
Oh, there’s conflict. History overshadows the enjoyable moments revealed in the outtakes, like John Lennon singing “Two of Us” as a Bob Dylan impersonator, or he and Paul McCartney challenging each other to a run-through without moving their lips. Jackson restores the balance.
“The connection was incredible,” drummer Ringo Starr recalled in a recent Zoom interview. “I’m an only child (but) I had three brothers. And we looked out for each other. We looked after each other. We had a few rows with each other — that’s what people do. But musically, every time we would count in — one, two, three, four — we were into being the best we could be.”
Jackson follows the sessions day-by-day from their start in a cavernous film set that was eventually abandoned in favor of their familiar London recording studio, to the brief rooftop performance that was the last time the Beatles played in public.
The filmmaker is sensitive to the idea that he was brought in to “sanitize” the sessions, pointing out that “Get Back” depicts George Harrison briefly leaving the band, an event Lindsay-Hogg was not permitted to show.
That moment unfolded after a morning where Harrison watched, silently stewing, as Lennon and McCartney displayed their tight creative connection working on “Two of Us” as if the others weren’t there. When a lunch break came, Harrison had something more permanent in mind.
“I’m leaving the band now,” he says, almost matter-of-factly, before walking out.
After a few days, and a couple of band meetings, Harrison was coaxed to return. The morning he does, the film shows he and Lennon reading a false newspaper report that they had come to blows, and faced off in boxing stances to mock it.
Along the way, Jackson’s project dispels and reinforces pieces of conventional wisdom that has solidified through the years.
essentially turned into four solo artists, with the others as sidemen to each other’s songs.
Myth No. 1: McCartney was a control freak.
Verdict: Partly true. The film shows Harrison visibly chafing at McCartney giving him and other band members instructions on how to play and cajoling them into a decision on a live concert. The band had been somewhat aimless since the 1967 death of manager Brian Epstein. McCartney had taken on the “daddy” role, and isn’t entirely comfortable with it.
“I’m scared of me being the boss, and I have been for a couple of years,” he says. “I don’t get any support.”
Myth No. 3: The Beatles had
Verdict: Not true. They’re constantly collaborating, seeking and taking advice. At one point, Harrison confesses to Lennon that he’s been having trouble completing the line that became “attracts me like no other lover” in “Something.” Lennon suggests using a nonsense phrase — “attracts me like a cauliflower” — until something better emerges.
Through the film, viewers can see how the song “Get Back” emerged from McCartney working out a riff on the side, to he and Lennon trading lyrical suggestions and throwing out an idea to make it a song criticizing anti-immigrant sentiment, to the full band working out the arrangement. Pleased with the final result, it’s Harrison who suggests immediately releasing it as a single.
“A glimpse of them working together is an enormously important artifact, not just for Beatles fans but for anybody who is creative,” said Bob Spitz, author of “The Beatles: The Biography,” published in 2005.
Myth No. 4: Filming showed the Beatles breaking up.
Verdict: Essentially true. It becomes clear that Lennon and Harrison’s enthusiasm for being Beatles is waning. Lennon is clearly in love with Ono; McCartney tells Harrison and Starr that if it ever came down to a choice between her and the Beatles, Lennon would go with her.
Harrison, growing creatively, is becoming uncomfortable with his secondary role. He talks with Lennon about doing a solo album because he has enough songs written to fill his “quota” on Beatles albums for another decade. As if to prove his point, the Beatles rehearse Harrison’s majestic “All Things Must Pass,” but decline to record it.
In the film, Lennon and Starr also discuss a meeting with Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein about taking over the Beatles’ business, foreshadowing a bitter split with McCartney.
“The whole thing is full of mini-stories,” Jackson said.
Jackson, who had been expected to make a conventional documentary, said he was nervous taking his much longer final product back to McCartney, Starr and the families of Lennon and Harrison.
“But they came back and said, ‘great, don’t change a thing,’ ” he said.
Among the priceless moments he unearthed is the joy on the Beatles’ faces as they played on the studio rooftop. The film shows the whole performance, the Beatles rising to the challenge and having a great time doing it.
When the police finally end it, the band and entourage retreat to the studio and listen to a recording of what they’ve done.
“This is a very good dry run for something else,” says producer George Martin.
That, alas, was not to be.