Thomas Moronic presents … An interview with a former writer of Hanson fan fiction *

In high school I was listening to fairly different music by then but I remember I secretly buying that single because I liked the picture of Taylor Hanson on the front.

Yeah, he was my Hanson of choice, too.

When I was younger I’d listen to an album that I really liked, and just stare at the artwork on it, and take in every little detail about the liner notes, and I always felt like that wasn’t enough in a way. Because I would love the music so much and it would mean so much to me that listening wouldn’t do it – I guess because I loved it so much I wanted to feel more a part of it, you know? I mean when I was a teenager I really loved Hole, and I’d sit and listen to their records and write out all the lyrics to each song, just because it seemed like a way for me to do something extra, show how much their stuff meant to me or something – I mean it wasn’t much, but I guess it made me feel less passive in the whole thing, you know? I wonder if that’s similar to what you were doing with the fan fiction maybe?

Yeah, it makes you feel closer to it or something. And I think when you feel connected to something, you somehow want to give back to it almost and become involved with it. And I knew that I’d never get to see them in concert. I was down in South Texas, and they wouldn’t tour down that path. They’d play maybe Houston or Dallas, but I knew none of my friends would want to go with me and I didn’t want to go with my mom. So I knew I wouldn’t see them. So the fan fiction was part of me connecting with them in some way. You know I could rattle off to you thousands of facts, birthdays, and things that I still remember about them, really weird things like their favourite colours.

What were their favourite colours?

Taylor’s favourite colour was red.
Isaac’s was blue.
Zac’s was green.

When was Taylor born?

I think it was like March 13th or something, because he was only a few months older than me. We were both born in 1983 and that was very significant. I mean when you’re 13 or 14 years old you’re not going to date someone much older. At least where I come from. Taylor would have been in my grade at school, you know? It was like, he could be someone that I would know.

So the age of the band was something that attracted you to Hanson?

Yeah, definitely and just their success in music, and I just really liked their songwriting.

I know you play music yourself, right?

Yeah but at that age I hadn’t. I’d only sang in Church choirs and stuff at that point. My mother was a music teacher, so I did grow up around that stuff, but in terms of Hanson, I’d never listened to a lot of bands. I mean, my parents would put on stuff like Simon and Garfunkel but that was the extent of it. I guess I’d mainly had a typical southern upbringing with Christian and country music. I wasn’t one of those kids that totally identified with like, Guns N Roses or something like that, you know? I didn’t really care about pop stuff, I didn’t really care about pop groups, so Hanson were my gateway into other music.

Yeah and I guess in some ways that Gateway band always stays with you. I remember the first punk type thing I ever got was this album called Troublegum by an Irish band called Therapy? And that led me in a lot of other directions, like I’d read interviews with them that led me to stuff like Sonic Youth or Husker Du, but I still remained really fond of that album because it had, as you so rightly put it – they acted as a “gateway” for me. And I guess anything like that, in your formative years or something, your first experiences of certain things, I mean musical, sexual, whatever – the first time you experience something it leaves an impression that can last a really long time, indefinitely almost.

Yeah I definitely think it is that. Like that first time you have a major crush on someone, for me it was Taylor, and the him being involved with a band. And those feelings were all really new and I was experiencing them for the first time. I think that was maybe why I was writing about them too, because I wasn’t actually experiencing them in real life even though I had all these feelings about them. So for me it was a way to investigate those feelings and explore them, kinda secretly for myself. But I was able to put it out there and also hide behind the wall of the internet, behind my screename. It started off with me and my friend Katie, because she liked them as well which is how it all started. We formed the beginning of the first novel. I ended up doing two novels and beginning a third.

Novels?

Yeah, well whatever a novel is for a 13 year old. I mean, just like a hundred pages or something.

Wow. I hadn’t realised how big the pieces were. I thought you’d just done a couple of Hanson related short stories or something.

I’d post new chapters each week. Sit at home and work on them on Microsoft Word, you know.

Where are the novels now?

There is one hard copy of each, but I guess they’re back in Texas.

Are they still online, too?

I really don’t know. I mean I know that in some ways everything in cyberspace exists forever but I’m not sure if anyone could still access those things.

So people read your stuff regularly?

Yeah, I had people subscribing and I’d post new chapters each week. It was a regular activity for me. But I kept it all very secret because I was so ashamed, because I was made to feel ashamed for liking that band so if anyone every knew how much I liked them, and that I was actually involved in their online community and I was linked to a billion different Hanson sites, you know? I had lots of people emailing me about the stuff. And the third novel which I think would have been really interesting: I had different people email me profiles of themselves and I was going to turn them into characters in the book, so they could get to interact with Hanson. But I never got round to finishing that because I was about 16 by that point and I was growing out of it and I was actually experiencing really dating a guy and it started to feel like you know – I didn’t need that stuff anymore. I guess when I started to feel more like I had my own life and had my own relationships I felt like I didn’t need to compartmentalise this other secret stuff. But I’d been so ashamed of it. I mean, I was such an ungrateful child, like one Christmas my dad got me this Hanson T-shirt and I was just mortified and so ungrateful and I said something like “You think I’m going to wear this? Why would you buy this for me?” and my dad said “Well you know, you could just sleep in it or something? You don’t have to wear it out” and I was like “I will never wear this shirt”. I was so ashamed. This band was just a joke to my peers and if I liked them it would almost make me a joke. Anyway of branding myself publically with Hanson was not good.

Can you tell me about what happened in your novels?

The first one involved this main character, I can’t remember her name, and she had very tight nit nuclear family similar to what mine was like. There was a car accident and the parents died and the sister was in a coma. My character got sent to live with an aunt in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the sister was sent to a hospital there. And the Hanson family moved in next door, and that’s a family with seven kids and the three oldest were the guys in the band. So they moved in and the novel was about this relationship being built with the new neighbours. It was very real, and so I wrote that the band had to go on tour and stuff. The sister woke up out of the coma and we all made friends and relationships began and my character started dating Taylor, I really identified with the main character obviously, haha. My sister started dating Zac. I don’t even remember how it ended, I think it was just a happy ending, probably very loose. The next novel was a bit more interesting to write. Hanson were discovered at the South By South West music festival which is in Austin. And I was in Austin, I was a kid in Austin when they were discovered. When they got big I was in a different city, I was in Corus Christi. So I used them being discovered in Austin and I used the fact that my dad was a Methodist minister, in the story. In the story they were there for the festival and their family decided to take them to church one Sunday, so they turn up at my father’s church. That story started with them at a younger age, and my parents invited the family over to our house for dinner, and I mean there was no sexual thing in it at all. And then the band went off on tour, and they’d come back when they were a little older and that’s when the relationships would form. I think my character actually died in that one. I got electrocuted in a pool.

Woah…

Yeah, haha. Well I think I just needed to end the story. So I wrote that I was in a pool and there was a thunderstorm and lightning struck the pool.

So you were Taylor’s girlfriend in that story as well?

Yeah and there were all these storylines about the struggles of them being on the road and trying to keep a relationship through that.

It’s interesting. I mean with the first novel it seemed like maybe it was more about just the process of writing it – a big splurge of you writing about Hanson. And then as you were growing older and starting to think about that stuff more the stories starting using Hanson as a way for you to work through your feelings more.

Yeah.

But you never completed the trilogy.

No. I mean looking back I think that the reason I had so many readers was that we were all a bunch of girls around the same age all wanting the same thing, with the same desires and urges. You hear it all the time that men are more visual and women are more emotional, and I think it was a way for us to cope with those certain emotional needs. And Hanson were really clean cut, you know? It was very middle American, very happy music. So I mean, I wasn’t fancying Jarred Leto or whoever, or the bad guy, the rebel, the type of guy who my other friends were fancying at the time. Taylor seemed really positive, so it made sense to like Hanson.

Did you ever meet up with any of your online Hanson friends?

No. It was all online. Nobody knew about it, not even my best friends. It was years before I told any of my close friends, haha. It was a big secret for a long time.

You finally got to see them play in the UK, right?

Yeah I saw them play in Glasgow. So I went, having never seen them when I was really into them. I met all these girls who were my age who had had similar teenage obsessions, and had probably gone on websites and had probably written their own stuff. So it felt very dorky and it satisfied that need that I had from such a long time ago. And I’ve never had that need to go and see them since.

I guess it was like reconciling something with the teenage you? You know, accepting part of you. Which I think is important, whatever the subject matter. I mean, I used to struggle when I was a teenager, but I think as you get a little bit older, if you can feel some sympathy for your teenage self then that can be a really helpful and positive thing.

Yeah, I was accepting that part of myself, being honest with myself. I mean people still made fun, hehe, but it was nice you know? It didn’t matter. There’s always that cringe factor. But I mean, getting to see them in my 20s was like closure on a teenage part of me.

The fan fiction had given you a space outside of yourself to work stuff out.

Yeah. Well the first novel was called Almost Perfect. And that’s what I was doing, writing about ideals.

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