By Rob. Walton
It’s hard to be taken seriously as a musician when you’re on People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People list and your radio-friendly hits are habitually berated by the critics. That’s the bane of Matchbox Twenty’s 31-year-old pretty-boy frontman Rob Thomas, who’s taken home enough platinum to fill a mine and scored solid hits on the Top 40, Alternative Rock, Adult Contemporary, Latin and Country Music charts. But rock and roll’s most deceptively clean-cut pinup boy has hitched a long, dirty road from his Southern white trash roots to the top of the pops.
Rob was born Robert Kelly Thomas on Valentine’s Day 1972 on a U.S. army base in Landstuhl, Germany. His parents divorced when he was two, and, for his formative years, he bounced between his young mother in a Columbia, South Carolina trailer park and his pot-dealing, moonshine-selling grandmother outside Myrtle Beach, Florida. By sixth grade, he and Mom settled in a central Florida trailer park. As a wayward teen, Rob learned piano in order to seem sensitive and pick up girls at parties. He left home at 17 and went homeless for three years, occupying his days by hitchhiking and writing songs.
In 1996, after three years with the Orlando-based bar band Tabitha’s Secret, Rob assembled Matchbox Twenty at the behest of Collective Soul producer Matt Serletic. Signed to Atlantic’s Lava records, the band’s first album Yourself or Someone Like You generated five bona fide radio smashes including the plaintive “3 A.M.” and the controversial “Push” (which was misinterpreted by some as an anthem for batterers). The debut defied all expectations by going platinum 12 times over. Rolling Stone‘s critic griped, “There’s too much complaint in Thomas’s plaintiveness, and over an entire album his angst makes for a long day.” The same year, Matchbox Twenty was named “Best New Band” in the Rolling Stone Readers Poll, defining the gulf between critical contempt and public embrace.
Thomas has written (or co-written) songs for Mick Jagger, Willie Nelson and Marc Anthony, but it was his 1999 collaboration with Carlos Santana on the aptly titled single “Smooth” that won him three Grammys and turned his generic moniker into a household name. Matchbox Twenty’s sophomore disc Mad Season by Matchbox Twenty soon followed and went quadruple platinum, yet the critics still balked. Through it all, “sensitive” Rob cried all the way to the bank…and the altar. By ’98, the once-pudgy saloon rocker dropped 30 pounds and made People‘s “Most Beautiful” list. In late 1999, Thomas married Marisol Maldonado, a gorgeous graduate student he met backstage in Montreal (and who stars in his “Smooth” music video). They live just outside New York and are planning a family.
Last year, Matchbox’s third record, More Than You Think You Are, seemed to warm up the critics (if a three-star review in Rolling Stone is any barometer). With a live Matchbox Twenty EP in stores and a solo project on the horizon, Rob Thomas won’t be pushed around any more. Recently, Playboy spoke at length with Thomas about surviving bad reviews, tripping at Disney World, getting high with Willie Nelson and much more.
PLAYBOY: Do you think with More Than You Think You Are you’ve won over some of the “music elite” who never gave you any credit when you started out?
ROB THOMAS: No, I just think they leave us alone a little more. The thing is, selling a whole bunch of records doesn’t make you a better band, so if you do it on your first record, you still have to realize the shortcomings you have as a band. To people who don’t like your band, maintaining success isn’t going to make them go, “Okay, I like them now.” They’re still not going to like what you do, but maybe they’ll respect the fact that you still manage to do it honestly.
PLAYBOY: What do you think the late great music critic Lester Bangs would say about Matchbox Twenty?
ROB THOMAS: I hate to think about that. It’s funny. I remember once somebody asked me what I thought because Mike D from the Beastie Boys made a comment that bands like Matchbox Twenty and Third Eye Blind were clogging up America’s airwaves or something. I didn’t know what to say. I think the Beastie Boys are really fucking cool, so that really gets under your skin when you start to realize that people you love might not like your band.
PLAYBOY: You recently told Matt Lauer on The Today Show the name of your band doesn’t fit anymore. How so?
ROB THOMAS: Not a lot of time and thought went into picking the name. We had the idea that, just like when you’re born, you’re given a name and it takes on its own personality. When people think of you, they think of your general nature and it fits with your name. We’d just come up with a name. “Matchbox Twenty, that sounds like it. It doesn’t mean anything, but as we start to grow, that will be what it is.” Some days we don’t know if we like it, but we’re stuck with it.
PLAYBOY: What would you change it to if you could?
ROB THOMAS: U2… [Laughs] U2 II.
PLAYBOY: Do you know Bono?
ROB THOMAS: No. I got all excited once because I was at the Grammys and I got to present the award to U2 when they won. As I handed it off, he walked by me and he shook my hand and he goes, “How you doin’, Rob?” I was like, “Dude, Bono knows my name.”
PLAYBOY: You ran away from home when you were 17. How long were you gone?
ROB THOMAS: Until now. For a while I would live at friends’ houses, because their parents would let me stay there for a week or so. Or sometimes I’d sleep in a friend’s car, then, when their parents would leave for work, I’d get up and take a shower in their house. And I would still manage to make it to school…for a while. The only reason I quit school was because I was in a band. We played at a Sheraton in Vero Beach. I was like, “This is it! I’m at a Sheraton in Vero Beach! We’re fucking rock stars now!” What else was I going to do? I was bitten by the bug.
PLAYBOY: How come you don’t have a rock and roll haircut?
ROB THOMAS: What’s a rock and roll haircut? We work our asses off onstage. I’ve tried to put some kind of gel in my hair, and that sticky shit just comes running down, man. You’re sweating and you feel like a fucking popsicle’s melting and running down your face. It’s not worth it.
PLAYBOY: The subtext of that question is that you don’t coif like a rock star. Leather pants aside, you look pretty wholesome.
ROB THOMAS: Hopefully I’m starting to plant the seeds for aging gracefully. I’m starting to do that so when I look back I’m not embarrassed by anything I’ve done. I don’t want to have my “Dancin’ in the Street” video somewhere down the road.
PLAYBOY: Speaking of Mick Jagger, how did you come to co-write the song “Visions of Paradise” for his Goddess in the Doorway album?
ROB THOMAS: During our last tour, we had only five days that we were going to be home for that whole year. I made a promise to Marisol that no matter what, I wouldn’t do anything on that week: “If Jesus calls, I’m not going to do anything.” So Mick called that week. I said, “This is the most depressing thing I’ve ever had to say, but I fucking can’t.” A month and a half later, we wound up being home again – something else got canceled or we moved a video shoot – and Mick happened to be in New York that same week. It seemed real serendipitous. We got together for two days in a studio. It was pretty amazing just to sit and watch him work… to see what surrounds him. There’s so much to being Mick that’s more than Mick. It’s so great to see that at the heart of it all is a guy who runs in the room with his guitar when he gets excited and just starts “tanging” out an idea for 30 minutes, trying to chase a melody around.
PLAYBOY: You wrote three songs for Willie Nelson’s The Great Divide album. Any wild Willie stories?
ROB THOMAS: I met with Willie on his bus. He was doing A&E’s Live By Request in New York. I was trying to sell him on the idea of writing with Rhett Miller from Old 97′s. He said, “I think me and you need to do something together.” Then he called me a couple months after that and we got together for a couple of days. It’s so amazing to sit in a tiny little room and get high with Willie Nelson. And he’ll play you whatever you want him to. If you go, “Man, I love ‘Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,’” he just starts going.
PLAYBOY: Did you get high with Mick, too?
ROB THOMAS: I’m not going to comment on Mick Jagger. Willie has an open door policy to his lifestyle.
PLAYBOY: With all of your writing for other artists, Us magazine dubbed you the next Burt Bacharach. How does that comparison make you feel?
ROB THOMAS: I love Burt Bacharach, but I think it would be cooler to be the next Tom Petty. He’s a guy that’s done everything right. There wasn’t ever the hoopla of the Tom Petty Era where it was him on every magazine cover and him taking over this and that. He was just a career artist who has consistently made great record after great record after great record. He’s maintained his integrity. He’s a good role model as a man and a musician.
PLAYBOY: What music do you listen to for fun?
ROB THOMAS: I’m a big “old” fan. I love anything like Miles Davis — Sorcerer or Sketches of Spain. I like Coltrane’s Impressions. I like a lot of jazz. But I love R.E.M and Indigo Girls, and I love Justin Timberlake. I’m the same way about music as I am with movies. If it makes me feel something and takes me somewhere, then I want to listen to it and I want to get into it. Like, I think Justin Timberlake’s record is genius. It does exactly what it says it’s going to: It rocks your body. [Laughs]
PLAYBOY: What music to you put on for sex?
ROB THOMAS: I’m a big fan of putting on Al Green’s Greatest Hits. It sounds really cliché, but Barry White is always real. And actually that last Paula Cole record is really sexy.
PLAYBOY: Legend has it you were quite the player before you married. Any good war stories?
ROB THOMAS: I took my obligatory circus time when we started. I still have the wild stories, but I don’t know if you know the rule; once you’re married, you can’t tell those stories anywhere but the locker room.
PLAYBOY: Someone told me you made a vow to your wife Marisol never to kiss another woman. Is that right?
ROB THOMAS: That was our first kiss, sitting in the back of the bus. I said, if you marry me, if you stay with me, I will never kiss another person.
PLAYBOY: Is it hard to stick with that?
ROB THOMAS: Oh, we have great fights just like any other couple will have. But we’re really close. She’s my partner in crime. If I’m going to go out and have a good time, I want her to be with me, having a good time.
PLAYBOY: On one of your fansites, I found the gem: “Rob Thomas is not gay because he is married and has a child.” Had you heard the rumor that you are gay, and where do you think that came from?
ROB THOMAS: I have no idea. Maybe my feminine nature. [Laughs] I would rather be mistaken for gay, though, than for being one of those stereotypical football frat guys.
PLAYBOY: Do you plan to have a family with Marisol?
ROB THOMAS: Yeah, it’s going to be soon.
PLAYBOY: Why do you give Marisol the credit for “Smooth” happening with Carlos Santana?
ROB THOMAS: I’ve always given her credit for the song because, besides the fact that the lyrics were written about her, it all seemed so destined to happen. I moved to New York because of her. We were living in the city. The guy I wrote the track with lived a block away from the apartment that I was living in in SoHo. This would have never happened had I not met this woman. She was in the video because Carlos wanted her to be in the video. Carlos actually had a platinum record drawn up and dedicated with her and my name on it together because he always tells me that had I not met her there would have been no “Smooth.”
PLAYBOY: You were a big guy when Yourself Or Someone Like You came out, and you even signed autographs “Fat Rob.” How did you put on all the weight? Was it rock star partying?
ROB THOMAS: Pounding liquor. And when you pound liquor, you’re up late and you’re eating crap and you’re definitely not going to the gym.
PLAYBOY: And how did you take it off? Was that Marisol’s doing?
ROB THOMAS: Part of it was. If you’re suddenly dating this gorgeous woman who can eat whatever the hell she wants and never gain an ounce, then you start to look at yourself and think, “Well, I don’t want her to be with this fat guy.” So you want to start looking better just for her.
PLAYBOY: Do you have any good Disney World stories from your days growing up around Orlando?
ROB THOMAS: When I was like 17, 18, 19, we used to like to drop acid and go to Disney. We had these season passes and we’d go and drop acid and just hang out. You really didn’t have to ride any rides, but you’d go on Space Mountain, just fully tripping face. It was completely life affirming. Then, “Oh, my god! Here comes this giant dog! It’s a giant mouse! It’s fucking killing me!”
