“You are not the person you were in your twenties in your fifties,” says Rob Thomas, speaking with Yahoo Entertainment from the tour bus that has been his home away from home — and sometimes his The only home – for most of their adult life.
Matchbox Twenty frontman, 51, is back on the road to promote his band’s first album in 11 years, where the light goeswhich he says “is full of questions about mortality and questions about the difference between where you are and where you’ve been. … Losing my mother was a really big deal for me. My father My relationship with is very difficult for me. I want to be a good father to my son, get this career off the ground, make my marriage work well – these are the things that everyone related to, you know? And I think if you don’t take the time to think about them and really give them a good, thorough investigation, then you’re probably not doing it right.
There was probably a time when Thomas wondered whether he would even live to be 51. She had an incredibly volatile upbringing with an alcoholic mother, an absentee father, and a grandmother who sold moonshine and marijuana. “When I was 10 years old, I was at my grandmother’s house learning how to separate seeds and stems so I could make dime bags so she could sell hemp,” laughs Thomas. “When I came back to a ‘normal’ life… my mom, you know, worked really hard to get us into a nice, middle-class life, but when I found ‘normal’ people, I didn’t Here’s what it was like. Thomas eventually dropped out of high school, spent two months in county jail for stealing a car, turned to drugs on his own, and was homeless for a while. But now he believes his Adolescence prepared him for the chaotic rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.
“I already had a little gypsy in me,” says Thomas. “I realize that if I had gone to Little League and lived a ‘normal’ life, I would not have had the attitude that I was afforded at a young age. I find now in my fifties that there are so many things along the way. All the curses have been blessings. And so in many ways, I guess I look at it as a gift. … And I wasn’t shielded From this I really wasn’t protected from some harsh things. But also the generosity of people, the kindness of people who are there to help you in that kind of situation – I was at the mercy of people who would take me in, so I saw that goodness in people as well. I think if you’re a person who writes songs, and if your songs are about relationships and interpersonal relationships with people — not just romantic, obviously, but familial and platonic and all the ways people interact with each other. Do – it’s a blessing. And so, that’s the way I’ve always seen it.
Thomas also soon realized that there was a life in rock ‘n’ roll. Only Life for Him: There was no Plan B. “I am not fit for anything else. I’m not really good at anything else. I don’t have any skills — like, life skill,” he laughs. Before Matchbox Twenty exploded into the mainstream in 1996 with their 12 million-selling debut album, myself or someone like youHe had “almost every kind of job you could do that couldn’t become a livelihood, like any kind of job I could get, if I had a gig I could leave on Friday, and then get a new job on Monday. I did all kinds of restaurant work, all kinds of construction work, all kinds of delivery work, driving stuff, building, making futons, delivering beds, roofing, drywall. I just did pretty much everything I could, because at that point I was just making my way through a bad situation, like swimming around, living on park benches and liftlifting around the southeast, and really getting myself Understand since I was 17 years old. If you don’t have an infrastructure, you don’t know where it will go. I was lucky enough to settle myself into something, and I found a work ethic I didn’t know I had – because it was just something I enjoyed so much that I spent all day learning it. I’m going to put in the hours and hours trying to perfect it and get better at it. And then I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t really realize Doing Have a work ethic!’ It has to be something I enjoy.”
Success came quickly for Thomas and his bandmates in the 1990s, which Thomas amusingly refers to as “the last good times”, and this success overlapped with Thomas’ unpredictable and equally large side career as a pop star. began with their Carlos Santana collaboration “Smooth”. in 1999, which won Grammys for Record and Song of the Year and still ranks as the third most successful song on Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Songs chart. (Fun fact: Thomas originally wrote “Smooth” with George Michael in mind. “I think he would have killed it, but if it wasn’t him, I’m glad it was me,” he quips.) And as Thomas’ star rose, he certainly indulged in his new rock-star perks. “There were a lot of drugs in the ’90s; There’s no other way to say it,” he shrugs. “So, there are a lot of hazy spots in that period, which is when I think I had a good time.”
Thomas is no longer completely sober. “Oh! No no. I’m dirty! My therapist is trying to operate on him!” He laughs. However, he insisted, “I am very control messed up, you know? I have been married to my wife for 24 years. I am very much about home life and my dogs. I got it out of my system, and then met my wife early on in this journey. Thomas says that ever since he and his wife, retired model Marisol Maldonado, fell in love in 1997 at the height of their Matchbox Twenty fame, they “have never been apart for more than two or three weeks.”
Thomas refers to Maldonado as his “best friend” and “ride-or-die”, and the two have had various conflicts over the years due to Maldonado’s various medical issues, including a brain lesion. including those requiring surgery, several tick-borne diseases, Hashimoto’s disease, and atypical trigeminal neuralgia. “It’s touch-and-go. It’s a part of us right now. I don’t think it’s going anywhere,” Thomas says matter-of-factly about his wife’s health these days. “I don’t think there’s a horizon that works like that. But it’s something you can learn to navigate, and he’s incredibly resilient and strong, so the second he has a good day, She moves in with him.
Thomas says that when he and Maldonado met at an afterparty in Montreal, “there was an immediate attraction,” but he realized that – like his decade-long professional success – the fact that he was one of rock’s most enduring and stable is one of the. The marriages a quarter of a century later cannot really be explained. “She was a model and I was 30 pounds heavier — and she was still into me,” he laughs. “But I mean, why would like It is the last? It didn’t make any sense. Like, I told him we were going to marry him on our first date. It’s just a recipe for disaster. But you know, it was there.
When Matchbox Twenty resumed touring shortly after Thomas and Maldonado first met, the singer would call his future wife from across the street every night, and they would stay up late talking. “We had to find the f***ing landlineHe laughs, remembering the simpler days before iPhones, WhatsApp, FaceTime and Zoom. “I’ll have to wait until a rest stop so I can get on a phone so I can call her! At the time I just had a pager on me, which she said made me look like a drug dealer. But the pager It was really just for girls who were on the street, so once I met her, I didn’t need the pager anymore.
By the time the couple finally went on that first date when he originally proposed marriage, they “really knew each other, because we just had hours and hours to talk about everything.” . And so, I think that really helped a lot,” Thomas explains. “We were so in love with each other that (Matchbox Twenty bandmate) Paul (Duckett) got jealous, because by then, Paul Was ‘my girl’!
And now, almost three decades later, Thomas is still in a contented marriage, Thomas and Doucette are still playing huge venues like the Hollywood Bowl on Matchbox Twenty’s current Slow Dream Tour, and in another contrasting development, Thomas is still Hai has been enjoying parallel careers as band frontman and solo star. “What a strange thing when I went alone, there were so many voices to tell me No To go solo, and then I went solo and it went really well, then there were so many voices telling me not to go back on Matchbox Twenty! Thomas says incredulously. “It’s a very unique situation, with bands and solos going back and forth and working together. Honestly, it’s all down to the generosity of the people in this band that allow this to happen. And it’s always Hasn’t been easy.
Thomas admits that when he and his Matchbox Twenty bandmates were “getting old and busy doing other things,” they once “kind of thought we weren’t making records anymore; we thought we’d just never -will tour occasionally, maybe drop a song or two here and there. (This isn’t the first major difference in their discography: the band’s third and fourth albums, more than you think and 2012 Answer10 years apart.) But when they were finally able to get back on the road after various pandemic-related delays, they were moved by “how many of our fans are still holding those tickets and waiting When did we finally go? So they decided, “Maybe we should re-think about doing a whole record together, so that when we come out we’ve got something new, not just a nostalgia tour.”
the result is confessional where the light goes, and Thomas is proud of the result and how far he’s come personally and professionally. “It doesn’t matter how many times we do it,” he says of Matchbox Twenty’s sporadic recording and touring schedule. “It just matters that we do it when we’re ready for it, so we can give it our all.”
Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
