PHOTOGRAPH BY G L Askew II September 2019 | Rolling Stone | 45
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ITZ AND THE TANTRUMS
owe their existence to
an old station wagon.
When frontman Michael
Fitzpatrick was growing up
in L.A., his father allowed
only two kinds of music in the house: clas-
sical and opera. But when Fitz rode in his
mom’s car, he listened to Motown and soul
on the radio. He liked the music so much he
started singing along — and never stopped.
“Much to my parents’ chagrin, by the time
I was five or six years old, you couldn’t shut
me up,” Fitz says while cruising on L.A.’s
Angeles Crest Highway in Toyota’s much-
anticipated new Supra, a model that hasn’t
been sold in the U.S. since 1998. “Riding
around listening to that music was the first
place I could have my own musical identity,
so it was completely tied in with car culture.”
Fitz admits he’s gotten more than his fair
share of speeding tickets — then floors the
Supra’s gas pedal. The 3.0-liter, 335-horse-
power turbocharged engine launches the car
down the mountain road, while precise han-
dling prevents it from launching off the road.
“It’s been a hot minute since I’ve driven
in a legit sports car,” says the father of three
young boys, whose daily driver is an SUV.
“It’s kind of awesome.”
Lack of sports cars notwithstanding, Fitz
has spent plenty of time on the road lately.
He says a decade’s worth of relentless tour-
ing, which put literal and figurative distance
between him and his friends and family, con-
tributed to the feelings of confusion and de-
pression he faced while writing songs for the
band’s new album, All the Feels. The 17-song
record features plenty of the party anthems
for which they’re famous, but it also has con-
templative and even sad songs — though, be-
cause it’s Fitz and the Tantrums, several are
still extremely danceable. Fitz says he’s more
proud of this album than any other. “That
cheesy fucking adage is so true,” he says.
“It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” K.H.The Faster,
More
Furious
Sports Car
F
M ICHAEL FITZPATRICK
OF FITZ AND
THE TANTRUMSFans of classic Japanese sports cars, nitrous
boosts, and The Fast and the Furious antihero
Dominic Toretto — i.e., the many car buffs who
worship the Supra Mk4 made in the 1990s — will
notice that the muscular rumble of this Supra’s
engine sounds more German than Japanese.
That’s because Toyota sourced the motor, along
with the eight-speed transmission and chassis
for this limited-production model, from BMW, to
keep manufacturing costs down.2020 TOYOTA SUPRA