Returning to their hometown of Waldorf, on Sunday, August 3, Good Charlotte will host an exclusive album listening party before a game at the Regency Furniture Stadium, home of Atlantic League Baseball’s Southern Maryland Blue Crabs. Opening its doors in May 2008, the 6,200-seat venue didn’t even exist when the Maddens first left for Los Angeles. But seeing it grow as a hub for their old hometown has chimed with their love of improvement and advancement. As have tales like that of five-foot-five underdog infielder Payton Eeles, who recently worked up from the Cedar Rapids Kernels and Fort Myers Mighty Mussels via the Blue Crabs to the Major League Minnesota Twins.
“If you’re a guy working two jobs but you can play ball, you can get on that team,” Benji says. “It doesn’t matter who you are and where you come from, if you believe that something is possible, then it is possible. If people get anything from our records, it’s that you can achieve anything.”
Decades down the line, Benji and Joel still rankle at questions about how the underdogs who wrote Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous could grow into the kingpins we meet today. Yes, being in a platinum-selling band, with celebrity wives and multiple businesses at alternative music’s cutting-edge mightn’t make them directly relatable to their average listener. But they’ve never pulled the ladder up behind them. Maybe it’s even better to project success for people to aspire to instead.
“Standing on the sidewalk seeing someone drive by in a sick car, we’ve never been the guys to immediately say, ‘That asshole!’” Benji says. “It’s always more like, ‘That’s awesome!’”
“We’ve always loved aspirational shit,” Joel gestures back to the Hôtel du Cap. “But how you act when you get out of that fancy car is a different thing. Maybe you are an asshole. At the end of the day, I love to see people win and to see them live it up, especially if they’ve come from nothing.”
“A lot of the time there can be guilt,” Benji adds, “around winning or achieving – or even simply trying. But listen to the lyrics to Lifestyles… [‘We'll take the clothes, cash, cars, and homes, just stop complainin'…’] and those on Stepper [‘Now I’m paid to rhyme this way and I’m everything I said I would be!’] back-to-back. That’s the answer. We said, ‘We’ll take it!’ and we fuckin’ did!”