Twenty One Pilots flying high on the fandom of millions and wary of family member impersonators
Tyler Joseph knows when to fight and when to flight, mostly, he tells Mikey Cahill
REDDIT conspiracy theory sub-threads, fawning YouTube tribute videos and even superfans who are willing to tell elaborate lies to infiltrate the inner circle. Twenty One Pilots, a seemingly meek duo from Ohio, have really got a hold of people.
In an age where fandom is measured in likes and streams — not necessarily album sales — the earnest rap rock genre-jumpers have managed to keep both very healthy.
“Our fans, you don’t wanna mess with them,” says singer and proud Christian, Tyler Joseph, smiling wickedly, knowing millions have his back.
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Formed in 2009 by high-school friends Joseph, Nick Thomas and Chris Salih, Twenty One Pilots built a regional following. They released a self-titled debut album, three members left and Joseph recruited a replacement drummer Josh Dun.
With half the band, they had the double the success.
Second album Regional At Best came out and the major labels circled. In 2012, they signed to Atlantic subsidiary Fueled by Ramen, released the Three Songs EP and worked with Adele producer Greg Wells on Vessel. Platinum singles Holding On To You, House Of Gold and Car Radio set them up for album number four.
Their 2015 LP, Blurryface, sold more than 6.5 million copies, won a Grammy Award for Stressed Out and that clip reached unicorn status on YouTube with one billion views.
Want more numbers? Twenty One Pilots have accrued 3.5 million Facebook fans for their own page and have another eight fan-run pages including one devoted to memes of Joseph and his bandmate Josh Dun. The latest Twenty One Pilots viral craze is fans posting videos of their goofy dads dancing to new song My Blood, no wait, that was last week, now Tyler has tweeted “dump your oldselfies cowards” and his 2 million fans are posting their old mirror pics to appease their master. It’s unreal.
You get it when you see their live show. Dun plays the drums and does backflips on stage, Joseph wears colourful beanies, raps and hip hop dances around while picking up whichever instrument the good Lord tells him to. Fans go absolutely ballistic.
Speaking to Joseph, he’s just had a close encounter of the bird kind. It’s not quite The Rolling Stones at Altamount. But it’s still a little hirsute.
“A lady was trying to meet me yesterday after the show in Washington DC claiming to be my mom. She got all the way backstage and on to the tour bus and was relying on the good will of the people around her. That was a pretty funny situation,” he says, only laughing because she was stopped by a gatekeeper.
“I was in the back in my bedroom on the bus and she got all the way to the living area. I was fortunate enough that my brother was on the road with us that night. She said ‘Oh Tyler texted me he wanted me to come back.’ And my brother said ‘Who are you?’ And she said ‘I’m his mom.’ And my brother goes ‘Well no, because his mom is my mom’.”
This occurred on the Banditos tour in support of new album, Trench. Looking at fresh photos from the night before, Joseph is perched on a lighting rig, nearly high up enough to take a low-five from a fellow pilot.
“Yeah you might find me on top of a few things. I like to make sure that I’m seen. When you’re playing your own headline show you have more jurisdiction of where you wanna go. It’s when you’re supporting or playing a festival that I tend to get into trouble. I’ve definitely been in that situation before, I don’t know whether I’ve learnt my lesson.” Do tell.
“We were playing Madison Square Garden a few weeks ago and I was running through the halls backstage mid-song to try and show up at the back of the room to surprise the entire crowd and then a security guy stopped me and asked me for my credentials. I was like ‘Are you serious!!?!’ I kind of got into a yelling match. I’m super intense when I perform so I was in fight mode rather than flight. My security was pulling me away, I was on the clock, I had an arena full of people waiting for me!”
It happens. An Englishman in New York, Blood Orange got mistaken for a punter after he played Lollapalooza Music Festival and claimed he and his girlfriend “were jumped by three security guards.” Joseph has hit a level where he has his own heavies to look after him.
It comes with a slight cost. Fans tend to mob them so everything must be orchestrated to ensure Joseph and Dun don’t get their skin torn off.
“We do a meet’n’greet every day, meeting as many (fans) as we can. That interaction isn’t quite long enough as I’d like it to be but it’s still really impactful. The fans show me their art or give me gifts, they’ll pick up on the tiniest things like what my favourite drink is or what my favourite video game character is and then they show up to make my day. Yesterday I got a drawing of my wife cutting my hair. She’s the only person who has ever cut my hair apart from my mom.” NB: his real mom.
“It’s cool, very weird if you don’t know the backstory. If you’re in on it then it’s very special.”
Those acolytes “in on it” receive a personalised birthday gift from Twenty One Pilots once they give their date of birth online. Possibly the least nefarious internet surveillance going on at the moment.
“Artists read stuff online and we fixate on the one negative thing. We just need to get over it and toughen up maaaan,” he says, exaggerating like a chilled out drill sergeant. “I look at Reddit but I try and keep a healthy distance from the rabbithole.”
Trench album track Neon Gravestones tackles suicide and accentuates the point that there’s a dialogue now in mainstream media and daily life around mental health. Joseph speak-raps: “Don’t get me wrong, The rise in awareness, Is beating a stigma that no longer scares us.”
He continues: “My mom is a schoolteacher so I get to pick her brain all the time about what’s going on with kids and how suicide is dealt with. I just wanted to start a conversation that wasn’t so florid. Let’s make sure suicide never an option.
“That song creatively was so hard, in Neon Gravestones I wanted to change up my writing style and not rely so much on metaphor. What do I want to say? That helped me get past the writers’ block. Musically the song is in three-four which made me write in a cadence that was new, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, and that added pressure. Sometimes I’ll hold on to a poem and it’ll live and move around until it finds a song it lands on and fits with.”
Neon Gravestones also tackles ageism.
“It’s me thinking about my grandpa who was a person who made me the person I am today. It’s me asking why we as a culture treat the elderly this way. I was asking myself ‘Why is it so hard for me to want to visit him?’ He deserves me to be asking him for guidance and wisdom. I became convicted by that. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to Asian countries and they treat the elderly in different ways, they hold them up right to the end.”
Stressed Out hits you straight away as great pop music with a very modern “meta-dada” approach. “When I was writing that songs I put down ‘My name’s Blurryface and I care what you think’ and when I was recording it the producer said ‘What does that mean? Are you sure you wanna say that?’ I said ‘Trust me, this album is all about this Blurryface character, it all ties in.’ No one expected this to be such a big song.
“In the second verse I talk about a certain smell and how it reminds me of my childhood and how I’d like to make a candle of it (chuckles) and my brother would be the only one I’d sell it to because we have the same nose. These are very abstract, specific things and for that to speak to so many people it really speaks to the power of music.”
Twenty One Pilots current world tour stops off at Perth and Adelaide as well as the east coast. Last time Twenty One Pilots killed it at The Forum.
“Whenever we’re in Melbourne Josh always says ‘It feels like we’re in a movie!’ Maybe you guys say the same thing, our understanding of your culture is through movies. It never gets old. The fans in Melbourne are amazing, they’re so caring and so creative, I get a lot of artwork.”
SEE: Rod Laver Arena, Olympic Blvd, city. Dec 13. $101.70/$132.25. ticketek.com.au
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