| "There's pressure to be a heavy band in this whole scene, and we just really turned our backs on it completely," says Einziger, 25. Though they have a DJ, Kilmore's work is all about texture, not hip-hop flava, and Brandon never busts a rhyme. "I think the world of rap-metal is just pathetically ridiculous," Einziger adds. "In my opinion, it's a very horrible place to be. We don't want to be part of anyone's little bullshit scene." The day after the video shoot, Brandon and Darren run a few errands in Malibu. As Brandon stands at a sidewalk ATM, a thirtyish new-age lady spots him and exclaims, "I know him! I mean-he's famous!" Brandon gets his cash, and she makes her move: "I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your soul." He thanks her mildly. She admires the red Sanskrit tattoo on his arm and asks if he practices meditation nearby "in the colony." She speaks to him in knowing tones about chakras and symbols-as if their shared spiritual interests made them part of the same club. Brandon answers her questions directly, yet cordially, never giving away too much. Not long after, a middle-aged mother approaches Brandon, her wide-eyed teenage son in tow. "We just love your record," she says. "It's incredible. We were already listening to it a long time ago." She asks if he'll pose for a photo with her, and Brandon obliges. Three giggling teenage girls also want a picture, and he offers them a smile but few words. Flash. They thank him, and as he wanders away, they ask Darren, "So what band is he in again?" Even prepubescents can't seem to help themselves. A ten-year-old lass walks up and asks, "Are you Brandon from Incubus?" When he says yes, she squeals and runs away. |
Brandon has a knack for leaving strangers satisfied without really opening up to them. "If he doesn't feel safe, Brandon can pull down a shield to protect himself," says Wiseman. "Most people can't see it." Once he feels comfortable, though, he's a good listener and a good talker. He looks directly into your eyes as he speaks; when you say something that pleases him, he'll mutter "right on" or give you a high-five. He rarely puts his foot in his mouth, though he is prone to putting his foot behind his head, yoga-style, when he's sitting around. ("I can do both, but I have to be lying down.") And he claims to be painfully shy around the opposite sex. "I get scared around really gorgeous women. I turn into a total idiot. I try to be funny, and I end up sounding ridiculous and walking away." Sure, babe. "Really," he protests. "Recently I saw this beautiful girl on the beach in Barcelona, and it took me 45 minutes to get up the nerve to talk to her." It's kind of baffling, this shyness: Growing up in Calabasas, California, an affluent town near Malibu, Brandon was always getting chased by girls. "Even when he was a small child, he had this charisma," Wiseman says. "Girls loved him. He had pale blond hair and big brown eyes, and even his teachers wanted to touch his hair." At first he didn't know how to deal with the attention. "In the third grade," says Darren, "my mom would pick us up from school, and this one older girl would jump in the van and smooch him all over the face, just maul the hell out of him with that cherry-flavored lip gloss. He'd cry and push her off." Soon, Brandon began to see the light. "One day in fourth grade, a girl from sixth grade followed him home from school," Wiseman remembers. "He invited her in to see his toys and play. After a while, he came into the kitchen and announced that she had been kissing him and that he liked it." Brandon inherited much of his mojo from his father, who was a model and actor in the '70s and '80s. "He was the Salem man," Darren says. "The guy on the billboard. He had bright green eyes and a green shirt on-'How come I smoke Salems and you don't?'" "And he was on Days of Our Lives a couple times," Brandon adds proudly. "He was also in a Julio Iglesias video, that duet with Diana Ross. I thought that was the coolest shit ever." He laughs. "I still think it's the coolest shit ever!" Nobody expected Brandon to become a performer. "I thought I wanted to be a cartoonist," he says. "I still think that sometimes." (He attended art school for a couple of years.) The video for Incubus' Top 40 hit "Drive" features animation by Brandon and drummer Pasillas, who were childhood friends. Both attended Calabasas High School, along with Einziger and Lance (their former turntablist, DJ Lyfe, joined after graduation). When they were 15, Brandon and Pasillas, a West Coast-punk fan, started dabbling in music. "It felt like it was coming from the exact same source as the drawing," Brandon says. His parents split up around the same time ("definitely the darkest period in my family's history"), and screaming through Metallica covers was an ideal release. Einziger also needed some musical therapy: At 14, he was seriously injured in a car crash in which one of his best friends died. "I withdrew a little bit from my friends and started spending time in my room playing guitar," he says. "For months, my parents tried to convince me to go to a therapist-they thought something was wrong with me because I wasn't freaking out. But in actuality I was dealing with it in my own way." Naming themselves after a mythological demon that has sex with sleeping women, Incubus started recording demos in a Santa Monica studio in the early '90s. They were so nervous before their first show, at a Los Angeles-area club, that Brandon's mom prescribed group meditation. "I had them lie down on the floor in the living room and took them through a visualization," she says. "I told them they were swimming underwater and that they could breathe and were playing with dolphins. They were so relaxed afterwards." A frustrated Incubus had no luck with major labels, so they released the goofy, Primus-obsessed Fungus Amongus themselves in 1995. But gradually word spread. Interscope came calling, and renowned producer Scott Litt (R.E.M., Nirvana) wanted to sign them to his burgeoning Outpost imprint. Incubus ultimately went with Immortal/Epic, Korn's label. "I was offering them burritos and guacamole," Litt says good-naturedly, "but they went with someone who gave them Rolexes." No hard feelings-he went on to produce Make Yourself and Morning View. |