| Avril Lavigne Articles & Interviews Seventeen Magazine January 2003 |
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| go avril! THE TRUE STORY OF A SORT-OF-VEGGIE, SORT-OF-PUNK CANADIAN SKATER GIRL WHO GREW UP TO BE AVRIL LAVIGNE. BY MIKKI HAPLIN PHOTOS BY EIKA AOSHIMA Avril, Avril Everywhere Rad-looking skater chicks with studded bracelets and dark eyeliner fill the sidewalks outside New York City's Irving Plaza, where Avril Lavigne is performing tonight. There are at least a couple of hundred of them, all wearing tank tops, ties and baggy pants. The singer isn't due to hit the stage for another five hours, but her fans are ready. After pushing through the crowd, I slip into a back door and make my way to Avril's dressing room. I'm dying to find out how the star feels about all the Mini-Shes. Avril is, after all, a fierce individualist who, at just 17 (she's 18 now), stood up to record executives when they wanted to shove what she calls "Celine Dion-type" songs down her throat. Since the success of her attitude-packed debut disc, Let Go, Avril has also acquired a reputation for taking on all comers, especially clueless stylists who try to force her to wear dresses for photo shoots. She usually wins her battles. C'mon, who can argue with sales of more than three million CDs? You can pick your friends and you can pick your... As she and I chat, members of Avril's band wander in and out of the dressing room to check out the buffet, which consists of mostly meat and cheese. The health-conscious musicians aren't thrilled, so they order in some miso and veggies. While they're hanging, I decide to ask Evan, the 19-year-old guitar player (whom Avril describes as her best friend), if he wants to reveal any deep, dark secrets about his bandmate. "She picks her nose!" he shouts gleefully, as Avril tells him to shut up. Matt, her drummer, chimes in with, "She picks her nose and eats it!" They all burst out laughing. Avril loves her band. "We met in New York six months ago, had a jam and fell in love with one another, we've been best friends ever since," she says. It helps that they're all close in age-at 22, Charlie is the oldest. Avril is closest to Evan, whom she discribes as very serious and smart--although he's also the highest-maintenance band member. (He's obsessed with organizing his suitcase for one thing.) Matt, 21, is the goofball who loses everything (like his passport!) and exaggerates every story for comic effect. Charlie (the newest member) is the lead guitarist and ad hoc band nutritionist: He often the lectures the others on what they're putting into their bodies. Avril describes blue-haired guitar player Jesse, 21, as a "crazy psycho punk rocker." (He used to be in Closet Case, a Canadian anarchist-vegetarian-peace-punk band.) A Veggie Tale Just like the punk thing (is she? isn't she? whatever), Avril feels her vegetarianism has been misunderstood. While she rarely eats meat (and no dairy when she's singing), she's not an activist, and she admits to snagging a bite of Matt's cheeseburgers every now and then. (The other guys in the band are true veggies.) For Avril, being vegetarian is mostly about health. As a kid growing up in Napanee, in Ontario, Canada, she used to go hunting with her dad and brother. It's one thing to kill a deer in the wild, she explains, "but when you take the cow and stick it in a cell where it can't move, that's just gross," Avril says. So now you know: Avril is a hunter vegetarian who sometimes eats cheeseburgers! Girls vs. Boys Just because Avril disses skirts and likes to hunt doesn't mean she's missing a girlie side. She's been known to demand that the band guys come to her hotel room for pore strips and mud masks, and at least one band member has lost his unibrow thanks to her tweezing skills. Despite that, I definitely get the vibe that Avril likes hanging out with guys more than girls. Her band is all boys, and when asked who she's going on tour with, she says, "I don't know, but it's going to be a male rock band." I'm kinda turned off by this--hello, all those fans outside are female! But Avril isn't antigirl; she's just impatient with what she describes as "girl stuff." She's never been a girl's girl. As a kid she was always out playing hockey with the boys (and named MVP twice!). And in high school (she dropped out in the eleventh grade when she scored a reocord deal), Avril says that the skater guys accepted her for who she was, but the girls didn't. "I just get along with guys better," Avri claims. Well, OK. As for guys who are potential boyfriends (Avril stresses that her band members aren't), she claims her pickings are slim. I find this hard to believe at first (hey, she's cute and famous), but then again, where is Avril going to meet a guy? She spends most of her time rehearsing, onstage or cooped up in her tour bus. Plus, she says, the guys she does meet are intimidated by what she calls "my situation." (this is Avril-speak for being a celebrity and is said in the same tone my grandmother uses when she says "cancer.") Avril appreciates male fans who are crushed out but also dismisses them: "They dont actually now me." To me, her situation sounds sucky and lonely, but Avril seems sincerely not to care. "I'm doing what I've wanted to do all my life," she says. Keeping It Real When Avril accepted her MTV Video Music Award for Breakthrough Artist last year, she said, "I'm not going to take this for granted." She wasn't just fronting. Avril is detemined to remain her own person, even though she knows the trappings of stardom can be hard to resist. She rejects body guards and other celeb perks, and carries her own luggage in airports. "I don't want to turn into a stuck-up little bitch," she tells me. But while she may resist divahood, don't expect Avril to sugarcoat her opinions. During a recent concert in Orlando, she mocked the teeny-pop acts on the bill--Aaron Carter and O-Town--which got her energetically booed. Then she started swearing and the sound guys cut her off. "It turned into a tiny riot," she says, obviously not regretting it. Avril may not like pop, but at least one pop star likes her--Justin Timberlake has said he wants to tour with her. She cracks up when I ask her about this. "No, I'm going on tour with Britney!" she yelps, then collapses into giggles. Avril is gracious that Justin digs her music (especialy since Avril accused Brit of using sex to sell music), but she assures me there's no chance she'll be joining the N'Solo tour. Sk8ter Girl Meets Sn0 Boi I meet with Avril again about a month later in Mt. Hood, Oregon, for some real action: snowboarding! Avril (who has boarded before and is already pretty good) is going to learn some tricks from 21-year-old JP Tomich, a pro boarder on the Quiksilver team. They'er on a steep slope near the top of the mountain, and Avril has just wiped out. her managers are freaking. I wonder if this might drive even the antidiva to a tantrum, but while her peeps yell for first aid, Avril just lies in the snow, laughing. Her scrapes are determined to be minor, and she and JP race back up the mountain. On the slopes I see an entirely different side of Avril: the kid. No dark eye makeup, no punk bracelets--this is the girl who followed her older brother around, determined to do anything he could. She's having a great time just goofing off. Later, JP admits he was skeptical that a star would be able to snowboard; he was surprised by Avril's skill. Not that she's likely to go pro anytime soon (there's that little musical career keeping her busy), but she definitely holds her own on a scarey slope. She keeps boarding after our shoot is over, and jP joins her. Hmmm...they seem to be hitting it off. I wonder if there will be a song on the next record called "Sn0 Boi"? Avril Unplugged The last time I see Avril, she's sitting in her room, playing guitar and writing--she's totally focused on her music. (And I don't think the song is about JP!) I want to say goodbye but she looks too intense and happy to interrupt. Tomorrow Avril is off again on a whirlwind of appearances, but right now she's in the moment--and keeping it real. |
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