James Valentine - Guitar
Jesse Carmichael - Keyboards
Mickey Madden - Bass
Ryan Dusick - Drums
written by guitarist/lead vocalist Adam Levine
these are my best friends. throughout the course of our ten years together we have been through so much both individually and as a band. we've tasted failure. relished our amazing success. every one of us has had our hearts broken. we went through fucking puberty together. we know each other. we've grown together. we've grown apart and back together again. so much has happened, and i guess the purpose of this autobiographical drivel is to explain it to the people who want to know where we come from.
on february sixth 1994 we started a band. ryan dusick, jesse carmichael, and i snuck out of the house one weekend and started fantasizing about making music together. we settled on the name that night after delivering birthday roses to a girl. kara's flowers was born. the next day during lunch period we decided to cut mickey madden in as the bassist. ryan would play drums. jesse, guitar. and i would sing. we were terrible. but we knew we would eventually be good. There was amazing chemistry. we played every friday afternoon in ryan's garage. as time went on we started playing shows at LA clubs like the whisky and the roxy hoping to get more famous than pearl jam. but that obviously did not happen.
the band kept playing shows and plugging away. eventually we started to create a small buzz and started working with some producers. We made demos. shopped them around and by the time we were juniors in highschool, we had a record deal from warner bros. on the table. we signed the shit out of it and made our major label debut as kara's flowers during our senior year of high school. it was released in '97 and the second we graduated high school they sent us on the road. We toured for six months to no avail. the record sold five thousand copies, which was pretty much a failure by anyone's standards. we were severely bummed.
time rolled on and the band stuck together. we left warner almost immediately and found ourselves back at square one, which was a bit unsettling for us considering we had more or less blown off college because we were going to become the next beatles. we didn't even become the monkeys. ryan decided to finish school at ucla. mickey got arrested for stealing furniture from ucla. jesse went to santa monica college. and i started smoking too much weed and writing mediocre, uninspired music. (by the way they let mickey go to ucla even though he stole from them.) needless to say the band was in disarray: unfocussed and unmotivated.
a bit more time passed and jesse and i decided to flee for a while. we drove cross-country and did a semester of college at this strange place in long island. we started writing and our musical tastes broadened. we eventually got bored and decided to go home and focus on the band with all of our attention.
now we were at a crucial point in our lives and our collective career. what do we do? we got together and started rehearsing and playing more shows. at one of these shows we met james valentine, who was in a band called square. square was opening for us at the chain reaction in orange county. when i walked into the club i was blown away by james' presence and talent. he was the best fuckin' guitarist i had ever seen. we needed this guy in our band. jesse had been focusing on playing keyboards and i was bearing the burden of all the guitar work, which i hated. so after much prodding and some heavy conversations with james, he decided to hop on board. this was the birth of maroon 5. all of a sudden, the music just started to get better. we were all listening to more hip-hop and r&b music and allowing it to seep into our songwriting. we decided to get really serious, more serious than we ever had been before. because the music was really getting good. FINALLY! so we started playing out more again and label interest followed. we met with everyone all over again. but they essentially all blew smoke up our asses. no one was really willing to sign us.
however, octone records came along at what seemed like our most desperate moment. we were feeling as if our second attempt at doing this was about to fail miserably yet again. but octone had immediate passion and dedication. we signed with them in the spring of 2001. we recorded songs about jane in the wintertime and released it in june of 2002. We've been on the road ever since. The album went platinum exactly 10 years later to the day of the band's inception. Since then we've had 2 number one hits and sold 5 million records worldwide. It's now 2004. ten years later we find ourselves on the most incredible ride of our lives. we are so much more than friends. we're brothers, bound by this incredible experience that only gets heavier everyday. I'm so glad we have each other. without them i don't know what i would do.
参考译文：
James Valentine – 吉他
Jesse Carmichael – 键盘
Mickey Madden – 贝斯
Ryan Dusick – 鼓手
作者：Adam Levine – 吉他/主唱
这些都是我的挚友。在我们相识相处的十年间，无论在组团前后，都经历世事众多。我们经历失败，我们享受成功。我们每个人都经历心路旅程，懵懂时刻。我们彼此了解，共同成长。尽管曾经分道，但终又聚首。我想，写这篇话的目的就是要让那些关心我们的人读到我们的历程。
1994年2月6日，我们组建了一个乐队。一个周末，Ryan Dusick、Jesse Carmichael和我从家溜出来并开始幻想着一起做音乐。那天晚上，我们给一个过生日的女孩子送去了玫瑰花，之后乐队便有了名字——Kara's Flowers诞生了。第二天午饭时，我们商量吸纳Mickey Madden来做贝斯手，Ryan作鼓手，Jesse吉他，我来主唱。当时我们逊极了，但有信心做好。我们合作出奇地默契，每周五下午都在Ryan家的车库里练习。不久之后，我们开始在洛杉矶的Whisky and the Roxy之类的酒吧里演唱，梦想着赶超Pearl Jam，不过那显然是不可能滴。
乐队不断地演出，不停地苦练。慢慢地，小有名声，并有了制作人的合作。我们灌制样片，并四处兜售。高三之前，华纳公司正式代理了我们的唱片。我们一笔签下合约，并以Kara's Flowers作为乐队的名称和标志打入市场，并在高三那年沿用下来。唱片于97年问世，毕业后，我们得到资助去巡回。六个月下来，收效甚微。唱片卖掉5000张，无论如何，那都是个败绩，那时我们可是很糗。
时光流逝，但乐队没有解散。那次之后，我们差不多立刻离开了华纳，一切从头开始，一切变得毫无着落，本打算成为Beatles二代，可一切却如同猴子捞月。Ryan打算到加大洛校（UCLA——加州大学洛杉矶分校）上完大学，Mickey因从加大洛校盗窃家具被捕，Jesse去了圣莫尼卡大学，而我开始吞云吐雾，写一些中庸的二流歌曲。（顺带说一句，虽然Mickey偷了加大洛校，可还是获准入学了）。不用说也知道乐队样子了——混混沌沌，人心涣散。
不久之后，我和Jesse打算离开一段时间，于是我们驾车长途跋涉，在长岛待了一个学期。我们开始写歌，曲风也变得豁达起来。终于，腻了，便决定回家，全心投入到乐队。
此时此刻，面对着我们人生和事业的十字路口，何去何从？我们聚在一起接着排练，继续演出。一次，演出时我们见到了James Valentine，Square乐队的成员之一。Square邀请我们到Chain Reaction酒吧演出，当我踏进酒吧，立刻被James的风度和天赋震住了——他吉他弹得一级棒，真是开眼了。我真想把他挖到我们的乐队，Jesse转而练习键盘已经有阵子了，而我挑起所有的吉他部分，叫我难以忍受，我讨厌这个样子。在一番不懈游说、推心置腹后，他决定加入了。就此，Maroon5诞生了。与此同时，乐队的作品越来越好，我们都开始听一些Hip-Hop和R&B，并把其中的一些元素融入到我们的歌曲创作中来。我们对待乐队的态度变得相当认真，超越以往任何时期。因为我们终于有所起色了，不容易！我们又开始到处演出，有了歌迷。我们再次去找制作人，可这些人都是敷衍了事，没一个真心要签下我们。
然而，Octone唱片公司在我们感到即将面对第二次失败打击这个最绝望的关头找上门来，显示出魄力和大气。2001年，我们和这家公司签下合约，同年冬天，我们灌制了专辑Songs About Jane，并于2002年六月推向市场。之后便是上路巡回。在乐队组建10年后，专辑拿下了白金唱片。之后，我们有两首歌曲稳居榜首，全球唱片销量5百万。在2004年，我们踏上不可思议的人生旅程10年后，我们的关系比朋友还要铁，这是兄弟情谊。共同，我们有着不可思议的经历，这让我们的关系更加紧密。能够结识彼此，我万分荣幸，没有他们，我难以决定何去何从。
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乐队作品（自制图片，详细信息可到官网查询）：
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乐队网站截图（这个文字颜色就是maroon ）：
注：英文原文出处，及关于乐队详情请点击 www.maroon5.com 。所有图片版权保留。
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发表于 2006-10-21 17:16:19
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