Rolling Stone USA - 04.2020

22 | Rolling Stone | April 2020

The Mix

HAYLEY WILLIAMS

FAST FACTS

DANCING QUEEN

Williams says her

younger sister

is on TikTok

“dancing every

day,” which the

31-year-old singer

finds amusing.

TIME TO HEAL This

June, Williams will

share her self-care

wisdom with fans

by curating a spa

area at Bonnaroo.

I

N THE SPRING of 2017, Hayley Williams

moved into the first home where she’d ever

lived alone. Earlier that year, she had fin-

ished recording After Laughter, her fifth album

with Paramore, and broken up with her long-

time partner, New Found Glory guitarist Chad

Gilbert. “Half of me was very drawn to the ro-

manticism of this artist who has had success

but now is living in this small cottage by her-

self, and there’s these huge fucking spiders and

bats,” Williams says, laughing over tea at the

Bowery Hotel in New York. “The other half of it

was that I was really lonely. I had a lot of shame,

’cause I realized, ‘Whoa, you are 28, and you

have never just taken care of yourself.’ ”

Paramore began when Williams was 15, a

couple of years after her mother’s divorce led

to a move from Mississippi to Franklin, Ten-

nessee. Once there, she met brothers Josh and

Zac Farro, who became the band’s guitarist and

drummer. Together they caught a timely wave

of pop punk and emo hitting the mainstream in

the mid-2000s, and Williams became the most

successful woman in a sea of eyeliner-clad men.

Now, with the band on a short hiatus, she’s

embarking on her scariest, loneliest endeavor

yet: her solo debut, Petals for Armor. “This is

the first time that I am seeing my name every-

where, and it kind of gives me heebie- jeebies a

little bit,” she says, mentioning a Times Square

billboard she saw before our interview. “My

name doesn’t look like a name, to me, that you

would see on a marquee. I also feel like Par-

amore is half, if not more, of who I am.”

Williams initially signed with Atlantic Rec-

ords in her teens as a solo artist, though

she never released an album that way be-

fore now. As Paramore took off, she became

an in- demand guest vocalist on hit songs by

Zedd (“Stay the Night”) and Lupe Fiasco (“Air-

planes”). But she always insisted on being billed

as “Hayley Williams of Paramore” on those

TWO YEARS AGO, Spike

Jonze paid a visit to his

friend Mike Diamond’s house. The

Beastie Boy, whom Jonze has known

since the early Nineties, had broken

his arm, so when Jonze needed to

select some photos for Diamond

and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz’s

Beastie Boys Book, he sent flowers

and brought the images over in

person. “I have photos of everything

I’ve shot the last 30 years,” the

filmmaker says. “Adam started going

through them and said, ‘There’s a

lot of photos. There’s enough for

[another] book.’ ” Later, when Jonze

was editing his film Beastie Boys

Story, he decided to do just that.

“Hanging out, laughing, creating

things,” Jonze writes in Beastie Boys,

a coffee-table book of candid shots

that’s out now via Rizzoli. “It’s all

the same to them, one doesn’t go

without the other.” ANGIE MARTOCCIO

Beastie Boys, Live and Direct

TIME TO GET ILL

Mike D rocks a mullet

inside a guitar

shop. “The Beastie

Boys were kind

of the absurd

superhero cartoon

version of what we

were all into,” Jonze

writes in his book.

“Somehow they

were both larger

than life and making

fun of it too, like

we wanted to be.”

TRIPLE TROUBLE

“This was around

’94,” Jonze recalls.

“They needed

photos, and we went

outside to the wall

next to Hamburger

Hamlet and shot

everything they

needed in probably

15 minutes. Adam

Horovitz [center]

is so hot. Plus, he

organizes really fun

softball games.”

BODY MOVIN’

The Beastie Boys

performing at

Lollapalooza in

1994, alongside acts

including Smashing

Pumpkins, Green

Day, L7, and A Tribe

Called Quest. “One

of my favorite live

bands of all time,”

Jonze says of the

trio. “Damn, I wish

you could all see one

of their shows.”

PHOTOGRAPHS BY Spike Jonze