Alexander Monney: Beatles Rock Band came out on September 9.
John Drake: Yeah, holy ****…
AM: It seems like that’s a sigh of relief for you.
JD: If we were never done promoting this game I would be happy. Let’s play Beatles forever.
AM: What sort of value does this hold to players who do not necessarily like The Beatles.
JD: People have a predisposition that they don’t like The Beatles because they don’t know too much about them. Like when I was in junior high, I was in sixth grade and all my friends liked The Beatles, so I was like, “The Beatles are wicked lame because everyone likes them, so I don’t like them…whatever.” As I got into high school, I noticed that people don’t like them because everyone likes them. It was because they are actually really good. The more I listened to them, the more I liked them. The good thing about for people who aren’t Beatles fans is that it is a great Rock Band game. There are new features like vocal harmonies and adding in stuff about the history of rock and roll with the Beatles being the first major pop rock band. Even if you’re not a big fan of the music, which means you probably don’t have the best hearing in the world, then you learn a lot about what happened during that time period. It’s cool if you don’t like The Beatles.
AM: I actually don’t like The Beatles personally. Just never really got into them.
JD: At all! What do you like?
AM: I’m a big metal head.
JD: Have you heard “Helter Skelter”?
AM: No I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.
JD: See that’s the thing. You got to hear the whole game since you would probably hate the first half of the game because it is great ‘60s pop. The second part of the game they get wicked bluesy and mix in some proto-metal. I mean it gets darker, slower and a little thicker. There’s some great stuff towards the end of the game that I think you would enjoy.
AM: Will the new features, like vocal harmonies, be implemented in any new Rock Band games?
JD: I think they will be. We’re waiting to see how successful they are. The vocal harmonies is probably the strongest gameplay feature for this game because it works with the biggest bands of all time. This is probably the strongest musical connection you can make with someone else by singing together with them in a room and hearing each other nailing a harmony part. It’s also really fun because the game doesn’t make you play one part and not the other. You can sing the melody and enjoy singing together with someone else. Like I said, it is just light-hearted fun song, but when you get ten people singing around three microphones it is really cool. But will it be coming to Rock Band in the future? I think if it is successful, yeah. It really hit us as something that we thought would be powerful, but we weren’t sure how far it would go. People who came to play test this game at Harmonix struggled with it in the beginning. After, they all started singing together and swaying in the room. It should be coming to future Rock Band titles if it is possible.
AM: What about difficulty? That is one thing that I was concerned about when I first saw the game. When I play Rock Band 2, I like going for those difficult songs.
JD: Yeah, you like Judas Priest and Rush.
AM: Yeah, how is this game playing towards some of those more advance players?
JD: There are a couple things. One, the story mode in our game where you unlock photos and media of The Beatles is a lot about getting five stars on each song. If you are playing on expert and trying to get five stars, it’s not going to be the most grinding guitar and drums, but it will still going to be difficult to get one hundred percent on it. Beyond that, if you are playing and singing at the same time, which The Beatles were doing so suck it up and learn how to do it, adds a whole new set of challenge of learning the song and being able to do it both at once. There is a lot of meat to this game. Some of the songs on there are a lot harder than people expect, like Helter Skelter and The End. Those guitar solos get pretty crazy and drums get pretty nuts. I came into this as a drum liking Ringo Star, but I didn’t think he was the hardest drummer to ever emulate in the world. He definitely sets a feel for the song, but he plays different stuff all the time. It’s really about watching the subtle variations. I mean Painkiller is really hard, Run for the Hills is really hard. Those are like can you do this in four minutes or will you die versus The Beatles where it is can you follow the music and keep up with the subtle changes. There are different challenges, but you are right to say that it is not face melting hard.
Aaron Peckler: How was it meeting the Beatles?
JD: It was awesome!
AP: That’s the one thing that I would love to do in my life.
JD: It was surpisingly awesome. They are really nice guys and they were super humble. Sir Paul McCartney asked the lead designer what she got on vocals at E3 and she was like, “Uhhhh…a 94%?” And he said, “I think you can do better than that,” and then walked away. I just said, “What?! Sir Paul McCartney knows how our vocal scoring works?” They were really into the game and have been working closely with out designers and lead producers for over two years now. This game has been in the process since Rock Band came out. It’s probably the game we’ve spent the most time and energy on and had the most people on it at one time. We really wanted to get it right since we really care about The Beatles. They are musically important to the world.
AP: How about Yoko Ono?
JD: She’s awesome. She’s probably one of the smartest people that I have ever met and her ideas about art change the entire landscape of the game in a day. She basically said, “here is what you are not doing now that would make this game ten times better.” The artists agreed and fixed it. It sounds weird, but when she left our artists and producers gave her a standing ovation and big hug because she came and changed the game six months out and made it what it is right now. Paul did the same thing with the historical backgrounds and the musical choices. He also brought a lot of stuff to the art of the game and how they visually looked and interacted on the game. They’ve all been involved in different ways, but they are all super interested in making sure the game touches the broadest audience. They are all just really nice and cool. I expected them to sign and contract and cash a big check, but they have been really involved and working closely with Harmonix.
AM: So, switching over to Lego Rock Band. Why Lego?
JD: Why not Lego? You hate The Beatles and now you hate Lego?! Why do you hate all the things that are good in life?!
AM: Well what about Duplo or something?
JD: Next Rock Band man…next Rock Band
AP: Or what about K'NEX?
JD: I don’t think we have the graphics engine for K'NEX.
*Everyone laughs*
JD: The real thing is that these games are some of the most fun, accessible games for all audiences. Families and kids can play together since a lot of these games are T for Teen. Some of those songs are a little on the hammer smash face side of things. We may need to stay away from those for a younger audience. With Lego Rock Band, there are some really funny cutscenes and with the Lego engine there is a ton of customization. You can build a pirate Lego Rock Band group. It’s confusing to say, but it makes total sense in the game. There are also some great challenges. We added new gameplay mechanics like Super Easy Mode for little kids who want to rock. Also, there are rock challenges. For example, a band would have to rock hard enough to bring down a building that a construction crew can’t take down. If you play it hard enough, the building will actually fall down around you. The song list is actually pretty crazy too. It’s not just tween pop and top 40 songs. We have Sum 41 and Blink 182, bands that kids would like. But, we also have the Ghostbusters theme song or The Final Countdown…holy **** The Final Countdown rocks. We have a ton of more songs that we haven’t announced yet that are really great. Wired.com ran a story that you should check out that was leaked somewhere at Harmonix, so I can’t confirm any information on it. But, there is some pretty exciting information about other artists who might be on it. You may want to look at that article by Chris Kohler, who is a great reporter. But, it’s not something that I can confirm officially from Harmonix. It’s just really excited…that’s why I say it.
AM: How is DLC going to mix between both of these titles?
JD: So, for Beatles Rock Band, it is very stand alone title. You can’t export any of the Beatles tracks. We’re doing "All You Need Is Love", which releases on 9/09/09 on Xbox 360. All the proceeds for that are going to Doctors Without Borders, which was a really cool idea.
AM: Who came up with that idea?
JD: The Beatles did. We said that we wanted to do a charity thing and Microsoft was really excited. The Beatles were like this is great since "All You Need Is Love" was the first worldwide broadcasted song in the UK. Having that be the first DLC song and having it go to such a great cause makes a lot of sense. So, for the rest of the DLC. On October 20, we are releasing the full album of Abbey Road. In November, we are doing Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and in December we are doing Rubber Soul. All those albums will be out at the end of the year and they are a great value. The Beatles will be releasing their entire catalog on 9/09/09 remastered, so it’s a pretty cool time to have all those come out. For Lego Rock Band, they haven’t announced all the DLC plans yet, but there will be some information about the DLC coming soon. There will be some DLC that will work with Lego Rock Band in a very specific way. We’re trying to keep everything family friendly and make sure that kids playing Lego Rock Band won’t be exposed to death metal and Painkiller. Just those songs with really adult themes.
AM: Like Children of Bodom?
JP: Yeah and Master Exploder. Songs by awesome bands, who we are stoked to have on the Rock Band platform, but seven year olds should be learning the songs to. Even the Penny Arcade song that they made on the Rock Band Network would fall in that category. I know that Mike’s son, Gabe, is like five years old and he learned all the words. His mom was just like, “this is a disaster…how did this happen?”
*Everyone laughs*
AM: What’s the news around the Rock Band Network? Has it been getting a lot of support from record labels?
JP: Definitely, the response to it has been uniformly positive. We’re still sort of working out the level of participation. Who is going to do what, how many songs can we get in the pipeline before it launches. Right now we are in a closed private beta. We are going into a closed public beta to bring a couple more people in. Then we are going into a public beta in, knock on wood, early November-ish. We’re still working out the dates with Microsoft on the backend stuff. Jonathan Coulton is asking fans what songs he should do. He played “The Future Soon” at our Rock Band panel at PAX. It’s the first it has been played on Rock Band anywhere and he got a 76% on expert guitar…so in your face Coulton. All the major labels have been talking to us about getting some of their smaller bands in there and all the major indies are involved. It’s really exciting and we’ll be announcing more artists soon, confirming that they are working with us. There’s been a lot of industry stuff popping up with it. There are companies that are getting paid now to author content for bands. It’s really surprising, but it’s really cool that people think it is that important to make robust content. It’s not a “midi smash notes together and make a song,” thing that other companies will tell you is a full music studio. I would challenge those companies to go into a real music studio and record something first before they say it is a “multi-track studio.”
AM: So it’s coming out on the Xbox 360 first? Any plans for PlayStation and Nintendo?
JD: We have plans to bring the songs over to the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii. We are working with both of those parties to get a solution where we can bring all the songs over and the whole network over at some point. Again, we’re definitely bringing songs over. We will hand pick some of the best songs from Rock Band Network and move them over as soon as possible to give everyone the great content. In terms of the backend, Microsoft stepped up in a huge way and took care of stuff like content proofing to make sure it is not vulgar and making sure that the songs don’t break your console. We wanted to launch it now since we have access to thousands of these songs and we didn’t want to hold it back. We’re definitely working with PlayStation and Nintendo. People just have to stay tuned. I wish we had a better timeline or answer. If there is content that comes out on the Rock Band Network, they should make themselves vocally known on RockBand.com if they want that content on the PS3 or Wii. We’ll make sure that our audio team will do the best and make sure that content comes over when they are not doing the amazing content that we are putting out every week.
AP: One reason that I never bought DLC for any music games is that you pay two dollars a song and you don’t get an MP3 file that you can use to just listen to the music. Why is that the case?
JD: There is a lot of thought about that. Alex Rigopulos, CEO of Harmonix, has said that it would be a cool idea. There is a lot of technical limitations and the thing that most people don’t think of is the licensing limitations. Who owns the content and where it lives is a big security question. How can people tell who bought the entire content? Would that make Microsoft the biggest distributor of musical content? There’s a lot of questions. It’s a cool idea that we are interested in. Whether or not labels would want to sign over distribution rights to their content would be a very complicated licensing and legal question. Again, we would be excited to explore it, but whether or not it is something we could push out in the real world is a different question. But right now, Rock Band Network is going to allow people to price their own music. They can make free previews of their songs, so people can try it out before they buy it. There will also be MP3s on creators.rockband.com, where you can check out stuff before. One thing that we are trying to do is expand on the traditional way of selling music. We want Motley Crue to sell five times as many songs on Rock Band per single than they do on iTunes. Let’s continue to help the music industry thrive and not kill it with one platform or the other.
AM: To close the interview up, what is you favorite Rock Band song or memory?
JD: It sounds like a weirdly timed story because it is about PAX, but we played “Are You Really A Woman?” by The Sex Generals. The Sex Generals are the band of the Penny Arcade guys. Every year we do a big music thing where they play on stage like Journey and some other awesome songs. We talked to Jared this year and he said he wanted to do a song by The Sex Generals. I just said, “what the hell does that mean? You’re a Rock Band band, not a real band.” Jared has actually been musician in the past, so he wrote out the lyrics and the music at home and sent them to Harmonix. I went into the studio the guitarist from my band, The Main Drag, John Carter, a couple of our friends and a producer. We just banged out this instrumental track and sent it back to him. Jared did the vocals and they played it on stage in front of five thousand people last night at the Omegathon. For us to debut a song from a previously fictitious Rock Band band in front of screaming fans at a gaming convention was a weird moving thing. They were singing along by the last chorus and pumping there fists. I mean, I make real music all the time. I’m a musician and I work at Harmonix…I just love making music. But, to have that translate into making a real song just for a video game and have people support it like it’s a real song is a really confusing thing. It made me really happy. Other than that it would be meeting The Beatles and not…you know…crapping my pants. Because, oh my god, it’s The Beatles!
AM: Awesome, well thank you for the interview.
JD: Yeah, thanks man.
John Drake: Yeah, holy ****…
AM: It seems like that’s a sigh of relief for you.
JD: If we were never done promoting this game I would be happy. Let’s play Beatles forever.
AM: What sort of value does this hold to players who do not necessarily like The Beatles.
JD: People have a predisposition that they don’t like The Beatles because they don’t know too much about them. Like when I was in junior high, I was in sixth grade and all my friends liked The Beatles, so I was like, “The Beatles are wicked lame because everyone likes them, so I don’t like them…whatever.” As I got into high school, I noticed that people don’t like them because everyone likes them. It was because they are actually really good. The more I listened to them, the more I liked them. The good thing about for people who aren’t Beatles fans is that it is a great Rock Band game. There are new features like vocal harmonies and adding in stuff about the history of rock and roll with the Beatles being the first major pop rock band. Even if you’re not a big fan of the music, which means you probably don’t have the best hearing in the world, then you learn a lot about what happened during that time period. It’s cool if you don’t like The Beatles.
AM: I actually don’t like The Beatles personally. Just never really got into them.
JD: At all! What do you like?
AM: I’m a big metal head.
JD: Have you heard “Helter Skelter”?
AM: No I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.
JD: See that’s the thing. You got to hear the whole game since you would probably hate the first half of the game because it is great ‘60s pop. The second part of the game they get wicked bluesy and mix in some proto-metal. I mean it gets darker, slower and a little thicker. There’s some great stuff towards the end of the game that I think you would enjoy.
AM: Will the new features, like vocal harmonies, be implemented in any new Rock Band games?
JD: I think they will be. We’re waiting to see how successful they are. The vocal harmonies is probably the strongest gameplay feature for this game because it works with the biggest bands of all time. This is probably the strongest musical connection you can make with someone else by singing together with them in a room and hearing each other nailing a harmony part. It’s also really fun because the game doesn’t make you play one part and not the other. You can sing the melody and enjoy singing together with someone else. Like I said, it is just light-hearted fun song, but when you get ten people singing around three microphones it is really cool. But will it be coming to Rock Band in the future? I think if it is successful, yeah. It really hit us as something that we thought would be powerful, but we weren’t sure how far it would go. People who came to play test this game at Harmonix struggled with it in the beginning. After, they all started singing together and swaying in the room. It should be coming to future Rock Band titles if it is possible.
AM: What about difficulty? That is one thing that I was concerned about when I first saw the game. When I play Rock Band 2, I like going for those difficult songs.
JD: Yeah, you like Judas Priest and Rush.
AM: Yeah, how is this game playing towards some of those more advance players?
JD: There are a couple things. One, the story mode in our game where you unlock photos and media of The Beatles is a lot about getting five stars on each song. If you are playing on expert and trying to get five stars, it’s not going to be the most grinding guitar and drums, but it will still going to be difficult to get one hundred percent on it. Beyond that, if you are playing and singing at the same time, which The Beatles were doing so suck it up and learn how to do it, adds a whole new set of challenge of learning the song and being able to do it both at once. There is a lot of meat to this game. Some of the songs on there are a lot harder than people expect, like Helter Skelter and The End. Those guitar solos get pretty crazy and drums get pretty nuts. I came into this as a drum liking Ringo Star, but I didn’t think he was the hardest drummer to ever emulate in the world. He definitely sets a feel for the song, but he plays different stuff all the time. It’s really about watching the subtle variations. I mean Painkiller is really hard, Run for the Hills is really hard. Those are like can you do this in four minutes or will you die versus The Beatles where it is can you follow the music and keep up with the subtle changes. There are different challenges, but you are right to say that it is not face melting hard.
Aaron Peckler: How was it meeting the Beatles?
JD: It was awesome!
AP: That’s the one thing that I would love to do in my life.
JD: It was surpisingly awesome. They are really nice guys and they were super humble. Sir Paul McCartney asked the lead designer what she got on vocals at E3 and she was like, “Uhhhh…a 94%?” And he said, “I think you can do better than that,” and then walked away. I just said, “What?! Sir Paul McCartney knows how our vocal scoring works?” They were really into the game and have been working closely with out designers and lead producers for over two years now. This game has been in the process since Rock Band came out. It’s probably the game we’ve spent the most time and energy on and had the most people on it at one time. We really wanted to get it right since we really care about The Beatles. They are musically important to the world.
AP: How about Yoko Ono?
JD: She’s awesome. She’s probably one of the smartest people that I have ever met and her ideas about art change the entire landscape of the game in a day. She basically said, “here is what you are not doing now that would make this game ten times better.” The artists agreed and fixed it. It sounds weird, but when she left our artists and producers gave her a standing ovation and big hug because she came and changed the game six months out and made it what it is right now. Paul did the same thing with the historical backgrounds and the musical choices. He also brought a lot of stuff to the art of the game and how they visually looked and interacted on the game. They’ve all been involved in different ways, but they are all super interested in making sure the game touches the broadest audience. They are all just really nice and cool. I expected them to sign and contract and cash a big check, but they have been really involved and working closely with Harmonix.
AM: So, switching over to Lego Rock Band. Why Lego?
JD: Why not Lego? You hate The Beatles and now you hate Lego?! Why do you hate all the things that are good in life?!
AM: Well what about Duplo or something?
JD: Next Rock Band man…next Rock Band
AP: Or what about K'NEX?
JD: I don’t think we have the graphics engine for K'NEX.
*Everyone laughs*
JD: The real thing is that these games are some of the most fun, accessible games for all audiences. Families and kids can play together since a lot of these games are T for Teen. Some of those songs are a little on the hammer smash face side of things. We may need to stay away from those for a younger audience. With Lego Rock Band, there are some really funny cutscenes and with the Lego engine there is a ton of customization. You can build a pirate Lego Rock Band group. It’s confusing to say, but it makes total sense in the game. There are also some great challenges. We added new gameplay mechanics like Super Easy Mode for little kids who want to rock. Also, there are rock challenges. For example, a band would have to rock hard enough to bring down a building that a construction crew can’t take down. If you play it hard enough, the building will actually fall down around you. The song list is actually pretty crazy too. It’s not just tween pop and top 40 songs. We have Sum 41 and Blink 182, bands that kids would like. But, we also have the Ghostbusters theme song or The Final Countdown…holy **** The Final Countdown rocks. We have a ton of more songs that we haven’t announced yet that are really great. Wired.com ran a story that you should check out that was leaked somewhere at Harmonix, so I can’t confirm any information on it. But, there is some pretty exciting information about other artists who might be on it. You may want to look at that article by Chris Kohler, who is a great reporter. But, it’s not something that I can confirm officially from Harmonix. It’s just really excited…that’s why I say it.
AM: How is DLC going to mix between both of these titles?
JD: So, for Beatles Rock Band, it is very stand alone title. You can’t export any of the Beatles tracks. We’re doing "All You Need Is Love", which releases on 9/09/09 on Xbox 360. All the proceeds for that are going to Doctors Without Borders, which was a really cool idea.
AM: Who came up with that idea?
JD: The Beatles did. We said that we wanted to do a charity thing and Microsoft was really excited. The Beatles were like this is great since "All You Need Is Love" was the first worldwide broadcasted song in the UK. Having that be the first DLC song and having it go to such a great cause makes a lot of sense. So, for the rest of the DLC. On October 20, we are releasing the full album of Abbey Road. In November, we are doing Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and in December we are doing Rubber Soul. All those albums will be out at the end of the year and they are a great value. The Beatles will be releasing their entire catalog on 9/09/09 remastered, so it’s a pretty cool time to have all those come out. For Lego Rock Band, they haven’t announced all the DLC plans yet, but there will be some information about the DLC coming soon. There will be some DLC that will work with Lego Rock Band in a very specific way. We’re trying to keep everything family friendly and make sure that kids playing Lego Rock Band won’t be exposed to death metal and Painkiller. Just those songs with really adult themes.
AM: Like Children of Bodom?
JP: Yeah and Master Exploder. Songs by awesome bands, who we are stoked to have on the Rock Band platform, but seven year olds should be learning the songs to. Even the Penny Arcade song that they made on the Rock Band Network would fall in that category. I know that Mike’s son, Gabe, is like five years old and he learned all the words. His mom was just like, “this is a disaster…how did this happen?”
*Everyone laughs*
AM: What’s the news around the Rock Band Network? Has it been getting a lot of support from record labels?
JP: Definitely, the response to it has been uniformly positive. We’re still sort of working out the level of participation. Who is going to do what, how many songs can we get in the pipeline before it launches. Right now we are in a closed private beta. We are going into a closed public beta to bring a couple more people in. Then we are going into a public beta in, knock on wood, early November-ish. We’re still working out the dates with Microsoft on the backend stuff. Jonathan Coulton is asking fans what songs he should do. He played “The Future Soon” at our Rock Band panel at PAX. It’s the first it has been played on Rock Band anywhere and he got a 76% on expert guitar…so in your face Coulton. All the major labels have been talking to us about getting some of their smaller bands in there and all the major indies are involved. It’s really exciting and we’ll be announcing more artists soon, confirming that they are working with us. There’s been a lot of industry stuff popping up with it. There are companies that are getting paid now to author content for bands. It’s really surprising, but it’s really cool that people think it is that important to make robust content. It’s not a “midi smash notes together and make a song,” thing that other companies will tell you is a full music studio. I would challenge those companies to go into a real music studio and record something first before they say it is a “multi-track studio.”
AM: So it’s coming out on the Xbox 360 first? Any plans for PlayStation and Nintendo?
JD: We have plans to bring the songs over to the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii. We are working with both of those parties to get a solution where we can bring all the songs over and the whole network over at some point. Again, we’re definitely bringing songs over. We will hand pick some of the best songs from Rock Band Network and move them over as soon as possible to give everyone the great content. In terms of the backend, Microsoft stepped up in a huge way and took care of stuff like content proofing to make sure it is not vulgar and making sure that the songs don’t break your console. We wanted to launch it now since we have access to thousands of these songs and we didn’t want to hold it back. We’re definitely working with PlayStation and Nintendo. People just have to stay tuned. I wish we had a better timeline or answer. If there is content that comes out on the Rock Band Network, they should make themselves vocally known on RockBand.com if they want that content on the PS3 or Wii. We’ll make sure that our audio team will do the best and make sure that content comes over when they are not doing the amazing content that we are putting out every week.
AP: One reason that I never bought DLC for any music games is that you pay two dollars a song and you don’t get an MP3 file that you can use to just listen to the music. Why is that the case?
JD: There is a lot of thought about that. Alex Rigopulos, CEO of Harmonix, has said that it would be a cool idea. There is a lot of technical limitations and the thing that most people don’t think of is the licensing limitations. Who owns the content and where it lives is a big security question. How can people tell who bought the entire content? Would that make Microsoft the biggest distributor of musical content? There’s a lot of questions. It’s a cool idea that we are interested in. Whether or not labels would want to sign over distribution rights to their content would be a very complicated licensing and legal question. Again, we would be excited to explore it, but whether or not it is something we could push out in the real world is a different question. But right now, Rock Band Network is going to allow people to price their own music. They can make free previews of their songs, so people can try it out before they buy it. There will also be MP3s on creators.rockband.com, where you can check out stuff before. One thing that we are trying to do is expand on the traditional way of selling music. We want Motley Crue to sell five times as many songs on Rock Band per single than they do on iTunes. Let’s continue to help the music industry thrive and not kill it with one platform or the other.
AM: To close the interview up, what is you favorite Rock Band song or memory?
JD: It sounds like a weirdly timed story because it is about PAX, but we played “Are You Really A Woman?” by The Sex Generals. The Sex Generals are the band of the Penny Arcade guys. Every year we do a big music thing where they play on stage like Journey and some other awesome songs. We talked to Jared this year and he said he wanted to do a song by The Sex Generals. I just said, “what the hell does that mean? You’re a Rock Band band, not a real band.” Jared has actually been musician in the past, so he wrote out the lyrics and the music at home and sent them to Harmonix. I went into the studio the guitarist from my band, The Main Drag, John Carter, a couple of our friends and a producer. We just banged out this instrumental track and sent it back to him. Jared did the vocals and they played it on stage in front of five thousand people last night at the Omegathon. For us to debut a song from a previously fictitious Rock Band band in front of screaming fans at a gaming convention was a weird moving thing. They were singing along by the last chorus and pumping there fists. I mean, I make real music all the time. I’m a musician and I work at Harmonix…I just love making music. But, to have that translate into making a real song just for a video game and have people support it like it’s a real song is a really confusing thing. It made me really happy. Other than that it would be meeting The Beatles and not…you know…crapping my pants. Because, oh my god, it’s The Beatles!
AM: Awesome, well thank you for the interview.
JD: Yeah, thanks man.