A Loser Fairy Tale

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A Loser Fairy Tale
Joel and Benji Madden blasted from a tumultuous childhood to rock-and-roll stardom. But can they still inspire the angst-ridden teens who made them rich and famous?

It all seems so unlikely. A couple of working-class kids from a broken home in La Plata recruit some friends and wind up winning the popular-music lottery, crashing the celebrity strata. How does that happen? And what happens when the numbers don't come up winners anymore?

Good Charlotte's last album was a disappointment: Released in September 2004, "The Chronicles of Life and Death" sold 1.1 million copies domestically, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It went platinum, but the band's earlier, career-making CD, "The Young and the Hopeless," had sold more than three times as many copies just two years before. Illegal downloading alone didn't erode the band's sales by two-thirds. Something went wrong. The hits weren't there. Fans had gone elsewhere.

Now comes Good Charlotte's fourth album, "Good Morning Revival." It will be released at the end of this month by Epic Records. Nobody in the band's camp knows quite what to expect. That's especially true, given that the group disappeared for more than a year, with no tours, no new music. Just all those tabloid headlines about Joel's dalliances with teen starlet Hilary Duff and tabloid magnet Nicole Richie.

Though the 28-year-old twins say they needed the breather, it was an awfully long layoff for a rock band with such a young and fickle fan base -- a demographic that David Massey, the Epic executive who signed Good Charlotte in 1999, calls "very problematical."

Says Steve Feinberg, the band's manager: "They're facing a real challenge."

Just about every recording artist is struggling with the turbulence of the modern music business. Illegal downloading continues to eat away at CD sales, which have fallen by 25 percent since 2000, and the chatter about new distribution models, new revenue streams and new paradigms has become deafening. But Good Charlotte must also deal with its own shifting standing in the pop music hierarchy; its lyrical themes are hardly unique, and the band has lost ground to groups whose songs about teen angst and alienation and confusion resonate even more loudly with kids.

"There's a minute where you're the new, hot band, and that minute's over for us," Joel says, rubbing the monochromatic Sacred Heart tattoo on his arm. "We're not the hot band anymore. We still have a lot of fans; we haven't gone away. But we have to prove ourselves. We have to make great records."

Says Benji: "There's definitely pressure. I don't know where we stand anymore, I don't know how we fit in. Like, hmmm, this is going to be weird."

Look around the Hot Topic store at St. Charles Towne Center in Waldorf. You'll find Fall Out Boy figurines and My Chemical Romance messenger bags and Panic! at the Disco T-shirts but not a single item bearing Good Charlotte's logo. Not even in Good Charlotte's own home town.

The sales statistics aren't just numbers on the band's balance sheet. Paul Thomas, the bass player who was the band's first recruit; Billy Martin, a guitarist and keyboard player; and Dean Butterworth, the latest in an ongoing series of drummers -- they might be in it for the art, the adrenaline, the money. But Benji and Joel Madden crave attention and approbation, a need driven by their father's decision to walk out on the family when the boys were teenagers. Some people with abandonment issues seek the presidency; others aim to go on tour with their favorite bands and play their songs in sold-out arenas. The motivating forces are the same.

"What my dad did," Benji says, "it made me who I am."

"It was absolutely a source of drive and creativity and wanting to belong to something," Joel says. "There's something in me, obviously, that needs attention because I'm the singer in a band. I'd be lying if I said I don't like attention."