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GenreRock, Pop, Alternative, Hardcore
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Albums4
Songs42
AboutAdam Levine was introduced to Ryan Dusick by a mutual friend and guitarist, Adam Salzman. Levine was 15 years old and Dusick was 16. Three of the five members of the band started playing together at age 12. The four original members of the band met while attending Brentwood School in Los Angeles. While attending Brentwood School, Adam Levine and Jesse Carmichael joined up with Mickey Madden and Ryan Dusick to form Kara's Flowers, a rock band. The name was taken from a girl that went to their high school that the band had a "collective crush" on. While they were playing a beach party in Malibu, independent producer Tommy Allen heard them play and offered to manage them and record a complete record with his partner, songwriter John DeNicola, who is known for his work on Dirty Dancing [1987] – including "(I've Had) The Time of My Life". Producer Rob Cavallo's management team heard the record Allen and DeNicola produced, which eventually led Cavallo to offer them a deal with Reprise Records, re-recording the album. However, after the release of The Fourth World, during Levine and Madden's senior year of high school in 1997, it had morphed into a band with a style reminiscent of 1960s Britpop. Despite high expectations from the band and record company, the album failed to catch on and their lead single, "Soap Disco", was a failure. According to Levine, the failure of the album was "a huge disappointment" that nearly led them to break up in 1998. The album sold around 5,000 copies and the band was dropped after one month.
Dusick and Madden attended college locally at University of California, Los Angeles, while Levine and Carmichael relocated to the East coast to attend Five Towns College, in Dix Hills, Long Island, New York. While Levine and Carmichael were in New York, they began to take notice of the urban music surrounding them and later let the style influence the songs they wrote.
When the band returned in 2000, they brought those influences with them. Sam Farrar (bassist of the band Phantom Planet) explained that the Aaliyah song "Are You That Somebody?" affected the band and influenced the song "Not Coming Home". Producer Tim Sommer signed them to a demo deal with MCA Records and produced three tracks with them in Los Angeles in the middle of 2000, with Mark Dearnley engineering. Against Sommer's advice, MCA declined to pick up the band, and these tracks were never released. The band put together a demo that was rejected by several labels, before falling into the hands of Octone Records executives James Diener, Ben Berkman and David Boxenbaum. While looking for talent for the Octone label, Berkman was given a bunch of demos by the brother of a former colleague at Columbia Records and the song that caught his attention was "'Sunday Morning'" which he referred it as a "genius song". Berkman was surprised the song was credited to Kara's Flowers, because the band sounded completely different from the one he had heard while at Warner Bros. Records.
Berkman encouraged Diener and Boxenbaum to fly out to Los Angeles to watch a showcase gig at The Viper Room for the four-piece Kara's Flowers. After watching Levine onstage, they were convinced. Berkman told HitQuarters he believed what the band needed was a "fifth member to play the guitar and free up the singer, so he could be the star I perceived him to be". Octone immediately insisted that the band change its name to break with its pop past. Also, the label began looking for a full-time guitarist to enable Levine to focus on performing as the frontman. James Valentine (from the L.A. band Square) was recruited for the job. On his joining the band, Valentine commented: "I became friends with them and we sort of started jamming together, it was very much like I was cheating on my band, we were having sort of an affair and I eventually quit my other band to join up with them."
Dusick and Madden attended college locally at University of California, Los Angeles, while Levine and Carmichael relocated to the East coast to attend Five Towns College, in Dix Hills, Long Island, New York. While Levine and Carmichael were in New York, they began to take notice of the urban music surrounding them and later let the style influence the songs they wrote.
When the band returned in 2000, they brought those influences with them. Sam Farrar (bassist of the band Phantom Planet) explained that the Aaliyah song "Are You That Somebody?" affected the band and influenced the song "Not Coming Home". Producer Tim Sommer signed them to a demo deal with MCA Records and produced three tracks with them in Los Angeles in the middle of 2000, with Mark Dearnley engineering. Against Sommer's advice, MCA declined to pick up the band, and these tracks were never released. The band put together a demo that was rejected by several labels, before falling into the hands of Octone Records executives James Diener, Ben Berkman and David Boxenbaum. While looking for talent for the Octone label, Berkman was given a bunch of demos by the brother of a former colleague at Columbia Records and the song that caught his attention was "'Sunday Morning'" which he referred it as a "genius song". Berkman was surprised the song was credited to Kara's Flowers, because the band sounded completely different from the one he had heard while at Warner Bros. Records.
Berkman encouraged Diener and Boxenbaum to fly out to Los Angeles to watch a showcase gig at The Viper Room for the four-piece Kara's Flowers. After watching Levine onstage, they were convinced. Berkman told HitQuarters he believed what the band needed was a "fifth member to play the guitar and free up the singer, so he could be the star I perceived him to be". Octone immediately insisted that the band change its name to break with its pop past. Also, the label began looking for a full-time guitarist to enable Levine to focus on performing as the frontman. James Valentine (from the L.A. band Square) was recruited for the job. On his joining the band, Valentine commented: "I became friends with them and we sort of started jamming together, it was very much like I was cheating on my band, we were having sort of an affair and I eventually quit my other band to join up with them."
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