Greg Prato (Songfacts): Looking back, do you regret the choice of the record company to market Nelson as a hair metal band?

Gunnar Nelson: That's a really great question. No, I don't. Actually, I regret the record company choice to market us as a teen-pop band. Hey look, neither one of those genres are bastions of credibility. But that really wasn't my intention. I started making music because I wanted to get chicks. You have to cast your mind back: in 1988, 1989, 1990, if you didn't have long hair and weren't in a metal band, you weren't getting any chicks. And so, that was kind of the natural way to do it. I grew up listening to Bad Company, Queen, Boston, Heart, and all the arena rock bands, and that was something that I wanted to be a part of.

But the drag is that unlike so many of these other bands that were out at the time, we actually wrote our own songs and we produced our own records and we did that out of the chute. I had my first instrument when I was six, and I was playing the LA club scene since the time I was 12. And the record company's decision to go the path of least resistance - which was giving all of our pictures to Teen Beat and Tiger Beat and Bop and all these other magazines - it was a real drag for us. It was inexpensive for the label, because these magazines were paying our record label for those pictures. It basically took care of all the marketing, but what it left for us was no room for anyone to talk about the fact that Nelson was something that Matthew and I put together. This is not something fabricated by a label or some Svengali manager. We never granted a single interview to one teen magazine, but we were all over them. It was great - I was flattered that we were millions of teenage girls' first crush. That's wonderful. But we never planned it that way.

And the aftertaste that was left for any kind of critics or anybody that was hell-bent to focus on credibility was to dismiss us as a made-for-teen marketing campaign, and that's never really what we intended. So that was really my only regret. Being a pop metal band? I've got to be honest with you, looking out at 22,000 screaming chicks was pretty awesome.

Songfacts: What was the lyrical inspiration of the song "(Can't Live Without Your) Love and Affection"?

Gunnar: That's about always feeling like being on the outside looking in - that was really my life growing up. I think a lot of people that grow up to be songwriters, our journey is really an internal one more than an external one, and we get really good at observing. The downside of that is life tends to live itself in front of you and you're observing and taking it all in, but not necessarily being a part of it.

When I was in high school, I certainly was not one of the popular kids. It seemed like all the hot chicks used to come to me to get advice about their dirtbag boyfriends, and I made them feel better about themselves, and they'd go right back to the dirtbag boyfriend. So that's where that lyric came from: a true-life experience of feeling that way. Feeling like you're observing this girl that you would kill to be with, and treating you like you don’t even exist. For some reason, I think a lot of guys can relate to that.

Songfacts: What about "After the Rain"?

Gunnar: That was also autobiographical. The song started out more as a relationship song, and turned into something that became a lot more. We had a pretty difficult four or five years in our early teens. Our parents had a really difficult divorce - a lot of alcohol involved, drug addiction, and all that stuff. It was a really painful time. My favorite line in that song is "Don't be afraid to lose what was never meant to be," and that's the statement for the song. That feeling got me through those dark years in high school.

When we started writing that song, it started out as a "What if?" song about relationships and really turned into something that was much more than that. It turned into a song about transcending what is never written in stone. Your future never is. It really does come down to attitude.

Songfacts: How did the songwriting process work for the new album, Peace Out?

Gunnar: It was pretty organic. As a guy who lives in Nashville it's kind of odd, but I don't make songwriting appointments - I wait until the ideas come to me.

This particular record was started without fail as ideas that came to me in that zone where I was going to sleep or waking up. I would record those on my iPhone, and go back to them later and listen to the song ideas and see which ones had merit. It was pretty clear to me when I got into this a couple of months in, that a brand new record was really shaping up. I'm really proud of this record - it's my favorite one I've worked on so far.

Songfacts: One of the songs on the album is "Rockstar." Tell me about that one.

Gunnar: The term "being a rock star" has been loosely coined and thrown around for a long, long time. In my case, I really found that being a rock star is really more of a state of mind than anything. I got myself to the point where I was thinking, "What would it be like if you're trying to psych yourself up and go through your day? What is it you could tell yourself to actually do that?" And for me, I just had this blessing of having been on stage and knowing what it felt like to go out there in front of a giant crowd.

I was having one of those days when I came up with the concept for the song. I was at a stoplight, and looked to my left and there was a guy who was brilliantly out of date: long hair, driving this beat-up Pinto. But he was rocking out to AC/DC, and he looked like he was on top of the world - bangles dripping off his arm, the whole thing. I thought, Man, that is really cool, because as far as that guy's concerned, he's in his limo and he's hanging out with chicks and he's on the way to the gig. And that's where the lyric came from.

Songfacts: As far as the songwriting in the band, is it a collaboration between you and your brother?

Gunnar: As it stands right now, I think I'm a little more passionate about writing songs for Nelson than Matthew is. We've been a year in Nashville, and it's a new trip... it's more like a modern Everlys thing, and Matthew is more geared in that direction.

But this stuff is really natural for me. The style of writing is something I'm passionate about, and because I am, it comes easily and effortlessly. On this particular record, I think Matt and I collaborated on two of the twelve songs, and he really came in and did a polish on them, which works out fine because a lot of these songs I pretty much hear completed in my head when they come to me. It doesn't really lend itself to that collaborative image of sitting down in a room together and working on an idea to turn that into a song. On this Nelson stuff, with a couple of notable exceptions, it's pretty much all me.

Songfacts: Why do you think so many songwriters are moving to Nashville nowadays?

Gunnar: I think Nashville is really a town that supports songwriters. There is a certain reverence to what it is songwriters do, and it's kind of nice to be in a place where it feels like you're not swimming against the current all the time. Here, you can walk into a bank and tell the banker that you're a songwriter, and they don't look at you like you've got six heads. That's kind of nice.

I come from a different background - my background is Los Angeles. Growing up in LA, you write a song, and the first thing people ask you is, "What does it sound like?" You move to Nashville, and the first thing they ask you is, "What's it about?" Two profoundly different things: one is lyrical content, and one is the melody.

What's really been a lot of fun was coming out here and trying to blend both worlds, and I think that's happening more and more nowadays. It's nice for professional songwriters to be able to come out and be among their own kind, and it's easy to have co-writing appointments put together and trade ideas with your friends. It's a song-centered town.

Songfacts: So would you say you get more songwriting gigs in a town like Nashville compared to a town like LA?

Gunnar: It depends on what you're writing for. If you're writing for TV and film, and you're doing jingles and stuff, you should stay in LA. If you're trying to get a cut that's for an artist, you're going to have a much easier time doing it in Nashville - not to say you're going to have an easy time, because there's a lot of competition out here. You've got to make sure you refine your craft and your chops.

You can't deny the power of a hit song: when you play something that sounds like money, people are going to want to cut it. But nowadays, it is getting more and more difficult to make a living - pretty much anywhere - as a songwriter. But in LA, bands were always expected to write their own tunes. Out here, this is really the last vestige of a town that had professional songwriters, but prepared and played songs with professional acts. It's one of the last places that really does that. To have a shot writing songs for artists, you have a much better shot doing that in Nashville than anywhere else.

Songfacts: You had another hit from your first album with "More Than Ever." Can you take me through that song?

Gunnar: "More Than Ever" was written when that first record was almost done. We had already started recording it when we started co-writing "More Than Ever" with Marc Tanner. Of any song on the After the Rain album, that one has the most Marc Tanner in it. He came up with a couple of chord changes that I wouldn't have chosen myself, but we were learning, we were young. We were 17, 18 at the time when we were writing that.

I had to write that as a "What if?" because to be honest with you, when I was 18, I really didn't have any great examples of awesome relationships in my life, so I had to put myself in the place that songwriters have to go. If you don't write songs from experience, you have to ask yourself "What if?" And on that one song, I had to put myself in a place and say, "What if I had this great relationship? What would I want to tell her?"

The funny thing is, all these years later, I realized I was writing that song for someone that I hadn't met yet, who I wound up meeting years later and ended up marrying. She had that song as a part of her life when she was in high school, and she had my poster on her wall! So as a songwriter, asking yourself, "What if?" actually can work out for you.

Songfacts: Let's talk a bit about your dad - what type of person he really was, and if there are any misconceptions about him that you'd like to clear up.

Gunnar: Well first off, for anybody who grew up with the Ozzie and Harriet show [The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet], he was the guy that you saw on that show - he wasn't playing a part. He was genuinely that nice. Growing up, I never saw him have an off day with a fan. He was really just a sweet person with a great sense of humor. But he lived and died for rock n' roll. There was a point in his life and his career where he could have chosen to have gone down the arguably easier path of being a TV or film star, and he instead elected to go down the rock n' roll lifestyle route, and that was not a life of personal assistants and deli trays like being an actor. This was lugging your own gear into seedy bars, driving eight hours between shows every day, eating bad food and being away from family. But he loved music and he literally lived and died for it. He was doing 300 shows a year up until the day he died.

So as far as any kind of misconceived idea about Rick Nelson, this was not a made-for-TV rock n' roller. This was a rock n' roller who happened to grow up on TV, and he was the real deal. He was the guy that had a great song sense as well as a sense for picking amazing players. Of course, Memphis had its scene, which was the Sun Records thing, New York had the doo-wop thing, and California, man, it was really Ricky Nelson holding down the fort. In California, what became "the California sound" years later really came from his music and all that stuff. You had Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and Ricky Nelson - those were the guys that started it on the left coast. I suppose for me, something I would like to clear up - if it even needs clearing up anymore - is that Ricky Nelson was the real deal.

Songfacts: As a side note, your dad is my mom's favorite rock n' roller of all-time.

Gunnar: Oh, there you go! Straight up, aside from that, he was a darn good-looking guy. Holy crap. There was a whole legion of women - I don't know how old your mom is, but the guy was impossibly good looking. So, combine that with the fact that he was a really nice guy and he was not threatening because a whole generation of women grew up with him on their TV. And then he started to sing, and holy shit, the guy could sing! Pretty cool.

Songfacts: My mom says that Ricky Nelson was even better looking than Elvis!

Gunnar: I agree! I'm biased, but I agree.

Songfacts: Lastly, what are some memories of being on Celebrity Fit Club?

Gunnar: I kind of needed that in my life - it was a good kick in the ass. But it was an offer I couldn't refuse. I want you to remember, I got sports on one side of my family. I've got entertainment on the Nelson side, and on the Harmon side, my grandpa [Tom Harmon] won the Heisman Trophy at Michigan. My uncle Mark [actor Mark Harmon] played quarterback for UCLA. I'm pretty competitive, so they were going to offer me a competitive framework with a specified time limit and great financial compensation to basically work out. They paid me to work out! And I couldn't understand the other people that were on the show that were complaining about having to work out. Are you kidding me? They're paying you to work out. This is a dream job, this is incredible!

And it was amazing - I went from 22% body fat to 9% body fat in six weeks. And I worked hard, man. It was cool. I had a radio show I was doing in the morning, and I left from that and I went to the gym and worked out for three hours a day. I did that basically for six weeks straight and I loved every minute of it. Nothing was easy, but it was great. It kind of reminded me that if I ever let myself go - or if anybody lets themselves go - they can get it back in a very short amount of time. You've just got to want it.

May 22, 2015.
For more Nelson, visit nelsontwins.com.

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