Regrets—Art Alexakis has had more than a few. And he’s had his share of losing, too. But the Everclear frontman has always done it his way. While far too many of his ’90s Pacific Northwest brethren (Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, Andrew Wood, et al) ended up six feet under, Alexakis has been a survivor, enduring arrests, attempted suicide, drug abuse, divorce, depression, bankruptcy and much more. Despite being dubbed Nirvana lite by music critics, Everclear soldiered on, becoming a platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated, hit-making band, and Alexakis used this success to champion causes close to his heart. The revolving-door group’s latest release, In A Different Light (429), is a collection of (mostly) older Everclear songs reinterpreted in a stripped-down manner. Alexakis is guest editing magnetmagazine.com all this week. Read our Q&A with him.
Alexakis: Nothing in my life excites me like rock ‘n’ roll. It’s better than all the drugs and a lot of the sex I have had. My mom used to tell this story about when I was a toddler. The family took a trip up to northern California to go camping and I was sitting between my mom and my dad in the front seat of the Buick (no car seats yet!) and “Wipe Out” came on and I started dancing so hard that I almost made my dad crash. When they turned it off, I freaked out so bad that they put the song back on and had to pull over until the song was over. I will be playing loud rock ‘n’ roll until the day I die.
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Longest. . .week. . .ever.