‘Fame was often more terrifying than exciting’
Thirty years since they broke through as youngsters, and with their 15th album out, pop siblings Hanson talk to Ian Winwood
Zac Hanson was 10-years- old when his group signed the recording contract that helped make them famous. The drummer’s sibling bandmates, Taylor and Isaac, were aged 13 and 15 respectively. Propelled into the mainstream the following year, the group’s major-label debut, Middle of Nowhere, sold 10million copies across the globe. Its lead-off single, the pathogenetically contagious MMMBop, topped the charts in no fewer than 16 countries, including Britain, in 1997. To put it mildly, for musicians as young as this, it was a lot.
“When you experience fandom in the way that we did, at times it was more terrifying than exciting,” says Zac Hanson, now 36. “You’d have 3,000 people show up to an event that can only really hold 200. It’s not fun, it’s frightening. And we had a lot of experiences like that… In our case, we were very much gifted this moment of [having] exactly what other people are dreaming of. So we were able to say, ‘Wow, what I really want is a different version of this, so how do I go towards that true-north version of that?’
“Because it’s not about being famous and having success. And we’ve seen that there’s a certain toxicity to certain aspects of fame.”
Truth be told, it is remarkable that no member of Hanson – who began their musical life singing grace around the dinner table at the behest of their oilman father, Clarke – ever ended up in a psychiatric ward, or an early grave. As the comedian Denis Leary said at the time: “These kids are a giant rehab festival waiting to happen… they are going to crash and burn so quickly.” At the very least, the trio from Tulsa, Oklahoma, the mid-sized, off-the-range city in which its members still live, looked like racing certainties to be glorious one hit wonders.
But no. Even as children, Hanson were in no doubt that their “true-north version” of success was the kind of understated singer-songwriter status the group now occupies. Released last week, Red Green Blue, their 15th studio album, covers everything from funk to American-songbook balladry with no small measure of fleet-footed élan.
Speaking on Zoom from their office space-cum-recording studio in Tulsa, the trio tell me that even at the start of their career they dreamed of writing music like Steve Winwood, a claim that sounds a little pat until one learns that the opening song on their very first tour was the Spencer Davis Group’s hit Gimme Some Lovin’, on which Winwood sings vocals.
“The reason we’re still here is because we’re still trying to live up to our heroes,” says Taylor Hanson, 39. “We’re still trying to imagine someone listening to our record and feeling like we felt when we listened to a Chuck Berry record, or Otis Redding. I’m still hungry and excited. On our passports, it doesn’t say ‘professional celebrity’. It says ‘musician’.”
We are speaking on the second day of a week-long schedule of streaming and in-person events celebrating the group’s 30th anniversary. Huddled together like kids at a petting zoo, at times the trio’s habit of interrupting each other is reminiscent of their younger selves. The fact that between them the brothers are parents to 15 children – Isaac and wife Nikki have three, Taylor has fathered seven with his wife Natalie, while Zac and his wife Kate have five – provides a powerful counterbalance to that impression.
“We’re brothers who have been together for 30 years,” Taylor says. “Of course, we fight. But we just choose to do it at the house rather than at a restaurant. So everything about what we are goes back to who we are.”
The question of exactly who Hanson are was raised two years ago in an article on the website Vice.com that revealed that an anonymous and now deleted Pinterest account belonging to Zac “housed a trove of pro-gun memes, many of which were racist, transphobic, homophobic, and sexist”. In response to the story, the drummer issued a statement in which he said that the revelations “provided a distorted view of the issues surrounding race and social justice which do not reflect my personal beliefs”. Amid a furore that went largely unnoticed by the mainstream press, the group’s audience, known as “Fansons”, split into two camps, some dismissing the allegations and others expressing concern.
Asked about it now, Zac is deliberately vague. “What a time in the world, is what I would say. This has been an incredibly divisive time, and a lot of those stories are about finding ways to start fires. That moment was very unfortunate because of how much we love what we do, and how much we love the people around us. It was also [an example] of what can happen when people are not able to have real conversations.”
Social media, he adds, seeks out divisiveness rather than “searching for truth”.
Nevertheless, the suspicion remains that Hanson hold beliefs that are more popular in the heartlands of Oklahoma than they are in the entertainment hotbed of Hollywood.
“We certainly don’t fit inside the perfect political narrative of California or New York, because we’re from Oklahoma,” acknowledges Zac. “[But] we try to stay outside of politics in every way.”
“We’ve fought hard for being known for what we do, and for letting that do the job as much as possible,” adds Taylor.
I wonder where they stand on Roe v Wade. The trio’s prolific production of progeny suggests they may be in favour of a recent draft decision by the US Supreme Court – leaked to the political website Politico – to overturn the abortion rights ushered in by that controversial case in 1973.
“Obviously, we love children,” is all that Zac will say in response. “And obviously… the best thing you could ever do with your existence on this planet is to raise a child.”
What is beyond doubt is that Hanson’s music speaks to a sizeable constituency of people who often go unnoticed by the tastemakers of popular opinion. Following a painful divorce from their major label, Island, in 2003, the group used their internet savvy to release music under their own steam while maintaining and expanding their audience in the emerging online world. Two years later, they undertook a tour of US colleges in order to field questions about the role of independent artists in the wider music industry.
“It was scary, because everybody we worked with in the industry said, ‘This is a bad idea’,” recalls Isaac. “They told us that we needed a label. That we needed to do things the way they were doing them, right? All of our friends in bands were saying that.”
In other words, Hanson gladly stepped back from the limelight. Today, it’s worth noting that the people responsible for MMMBop were children. In writing and performing their own material, they saw themselves as part of a group of emerging North American songwriters – as contemporaries of Hootie & the Blowfish and Alanis Morissette – rather than the kind of manufactured band that dominates the charts. They were confused that others might see it differently. These days, at least, Hanson are able to take their music to the world without people who don’t listen to it ever giving them a second glance. “It was probably true right at the start, but certainly it is now: if we can manage to live in anonymity while the music still connects with people, I think we’re all good with that,” says Taylor.