in the gifted and talented class. I was smart. I was good at English, I was awful at maths, but I understood everything and I could get what the teacher was saying. Still, I hated it. I kept thinking, Why the hell am I in a class that needs me to be smarter when I don’t even want to be here in the first place? Everyone else was so dedicated to school. They were getting all these amazing grades and I was like, ‘Forget this.’ The next year they put me in the average class.
When I was about 12 or 13, life got a bit tougher for me because the recession happened and it hit Mum and Dad really hard. I was an only child and until then I’d been pretty spoilt, I guess. I hadn’t realised what money was worth because I was so young. I would just ask for things and get them, no problem. Once I’d got into my teenage years and my parents went broke, it made me realise that I couldn’t expect everything to happen for me.
Now I’m in the band, I appreciate absolutely everything we do together. Every time we’re on stage, I’m happy. Every time we’re meeting fans or signing autographs for people, I make sure I enjoy it, because I know from my parents how hard life can be when things aren’t running so smoothly. Even when I’m tired from all the shows and touring, I tell myself how lucky I am. I got all of that from my childhood. That was a pretty important lesson to pick up.
Let’s Get Out
Getting into Guitar Hero made me fall in love with punk, metal and old-school rock. I loved playing along to songs by bands like the British metal band DragonForce and also Metallica because on The Black Album they delivered riffs that were so damn heavy they blew my head off.
I’d play that game over and over – I even got a Guitar Hero drum kit. I always thought that shredding it on Guitar Hero – that’s when you play loads of notes, super fast – was more impressive than shredding it on a real guitar.
When it came to playing the real thing, oh dude, it was so hard! At first I tried singing lessons, but I hated them. Then I tried playing the piano. Eventually, when I was 11, Mum and Dad bought me a crappy acoustic guitar from a shop down the road, but when I started taking lessons, I nearly quit straightaway. I was like, ‘No way, this is so tough.’ My guitar teacher, David, kept encouraging me and I eventually got over my frustrations of not being able to play anything. Now I’m in our band I’m so glad I stuck with it. Imagine if I’d given up and never picked up the guitar again?
The first song I learned from start to finish was that awful tune ‘Ode to Joy’ – you probably would have heard it at school. After that I got to play Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’, but really badly. Then came the basic rock classics, like Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’. I drove everyone mad playing that, but it soon paid off and after a year of practising, I got an electric guitar when I was 11 years old. It felt cool to bash out songs really loud on the amp.
I was getting into some great bands back then. Guitar Hero tuned me into some of the older rock groups like Led Zeppelin, which then directed me to Blink-182 and Green Day.
But it was the American band All Time Low that got me really excited. I loved their songs. They mixed pop and punk so perfectly and they looked like they were having a great time, all the time. Alex Gaskarth, their lead singer, had such a powerful voice, which worked so well with some seriously infectious guitar hooks. I was sold on them straightaway. He was an absolute dude, too. I wanted to be in a band because of them; I guess I started singing because of Alex as well – he was a hero to me at that time.
Up until Year 7 I was an absolute geek. I’d had a few friends, other geeks, but other people at school didn’t really like me that much. Then I manned up a little: I got myself a girlfriend and I met Luke in a Year 7 orientation day at Norwest. I also became friends with Calum. We had known each other since Year 3, but we hadn’t really hung out that much. It wasn’t long before we were all really close.
It was music that brought us together, because, I admit it, when I first met Luke I figured, ‘He’s too cool. He’s the type of guy I can’t be friends with.’ He thought he was great (but he wasn’t!). But Calum was really nice, he was the guy who everyone liked. I guess I was the guy who everyone didn’t. I also looked a little bit different to everyone else. I wanted to dress like Lil Wayne, but at the same time I wanted to look like Alex Gaskarth. I was kinda confused.
There was also a period, just before we’d hit it off, where Luke and I hated one another for a bit. It was over a girl at school. He’d really liked her and I’d liked her, too, but I’d asked the question first. For a while Luke was always being rude to me, but once we started talking music together, we got over it. But Luke was cool. I knew he was really into his music because he had been making cover versions of songs by people like Jason Mraz and posting them on YouTube. They were OK – not great – but there was something interesting about them.
Suddenly, Luke, Calum and I spent all our time together, hanging out in Music class. When we weren’t in lessons, we were in the music room playing riffs together. All of us had guitars, so we would learn songs and mess around. When it came to the school’s annual show, Live At Norwest, Luke and Calum did a song together. I went on my own and did a medley of songs by the band Panic! At the Disco. I really liked it, but I only got a 7/10 score. Still, in my head it was amazing.
Then one day in school, I turned round to the others and said, ‘Dude, what if we started a band like All Time Low?’ I thought it would be great if we could hang out and make real songs together; playing our guitars as loud as we could and writing records as iconic and vital as American Idiot or All Time Low’s Nothing Personal. They got excited and said, ‘Yeah, man, why not? It would be awesome.’ And the rest is history.
Ashton
I’ve Gone from Place to Place
One of the things I can tell you about growing up in Australia was that I never stayed in one place for too long. My dad left when I was two, and me and Mum moved around a bit, from home to home – sometimes we even lived in caravan parks. At times I had to meet new friends and get used to new homes, which was pretty tough.
Most of the time, we were in a place called Windsor, which was about an hour and a half out of Sydney. When I started at primary school, I was a good kid, but I used to get into trouble with the teachers loads because I was very loud. Every report card said the same thing: ‘Ashton gets distracted a lot. He should concentrate more.’ I guess I just wanted to be funny and I loved being the centre of attention.
Luckily I was pretty smart, otherwise I would have been in some serious trouble with Mum. She was kinda strict when it came to schoolwork and if I played up, or didn’t do well in classes, she wouldn’t stand for it. She could be pretty frightening sometimes, but I knew she was only doing it because she loved me and wanted what’s best for me.
Living
