100 Interviews

#99. RAAM (of Hypernova) - “Someone who is banned from their home country.”

Raam is leaving for Ecuador later to go on holiday with his parents.

He apologizes profusely because he needs to Skype with them to figure out some logistics for the trip. I tell him it’s cool, that I’ll wait and then I watch him argue with them in Persian for ten minutes. I don’t speak the language at all, but I know they’re fighting because of the tones of voice alone. It ends with Raam saying what I imagine is Persian for “Fine, okay” over and over.

He hangs up and apologizes to me again.

“Were you fighting?” I ask. He says they were, over the choice of hotel. I laugh. Fighting with your parents sounds the same in any language.

Raam looks like the Iranian Buddy Holly, because of his glasses and cropped hair. I joke that Brooklyn, where he lives, has really done him in. It’s a far cry from his home: Tehran, Iran.

Raam is the lead singer and one of the main songwriters of the Iranian punk band, Hypernova. He was born in Iran and moved to Eugene, Oregon when he was young so his father could get his PhD. When Raam was 10, his family moved back to Iran until he was around 18 years old. Then, Raam went to Canada for college and then back to Iran in 2000.

In Iran, Raam’s father is a professor and his mother is a housewife and cooking teacher. They’re also environmental enthusiasts, taking people on treks up the mountains for weeks at a time. His father leads the group and his mother cooks. Raam says his parents support his work 100 percent, despite the inherent dangers of making punk music in Iran.

His girlfriend also calls him during the interview. She and Raam, who never thought he’d sing in his native Persian, collaborated on a song called “The Hunter” for Raam’s new solo project “King Raam.” The song, a beautiful, dark tune that has been tied to the recent Iranian protests, combined her poetry and his music. It became the most popular Persian song of the year.

Before all that: His band Hypernova’s big break came when they were accepted into Texas’s South by Southwest Music Festival in 2007. Because of trouble with their visas, the band members weren’t able to make it to the United States in time.

But what seemed like a huge disappointment actually skyrocketed Hypernova into music superstardom — and got Raam banned from ever again visiting the country where he was born.

Reading through the transcript of our talk, I find myself highlighting huge chunks of Raam’s words. So here’s a 100 Interviews first: The majority of this interview will be styled like a Q&A. It’s a different format because 1) I love everything Raam said and I think it’s important 2) I have seven interviews backlogged and I’m crunched for time and 3) It’s always nice to switch things up. I thought you guys might like to see how I ask questions after all this time. So here goes:

Gaby: Were you always a musician?

Raam: No. I did play a little piano when I was a kid. I read a lot. I wrote a lot. But I never thought I’d be a singer. I think every kid at one point dreams of becoming a rock star but that comes and goes. Like every other kid I wanted to be an astronomer or something.

Gaby: You taught yourself guitar?

Raam:  I just taught myself how to play after I joined the band.

Gabrielle:  Were you like, “What if I can’t sing?”

Raam:  It’s really funny. Now that I sing, I sing in this very low baritone.

Gaby: You have a very low voice, yeah.

Raam:  When I first came to [New York City in 2008] people told me, “You sound like Ian Curtis of Joy Division.” I’m like, “Who’s Ian Curtis?” I’d never heard of this guy. And people told me, “You sound exactly like him.” “Or your band sounds like this guy or this band.” It’s funny, because all the bands that we were compared to, I’d never heard of. But now I’m fans of them. Like Bauhaus or Chameleons or Psychedelic Furs, and Sisters of Mercy.

Gaby: You split time between Iran and the US growing up. Is there a big difference between how things are for you in Iran versus how they are when you are in Oregon? Are you able to handle doing things differently in each place?

Raam: In a way. It was very different growing up in this very progressive, liberal place like Eugene, Oregon… I moved back to Iran and my teacher beat me up on the first day of school. Nobody ever raised a hand on me so it was also this huge culture shock. People who are in power back in Iran are people who follow a very archaic kind of living, unfortunately. The fundamentalists, even though they’re the minority, are the ones who unfortunately wield the power. And they’re a very dangerous group.

Gaby: Who came up with the idea to start a rock band?

Raam: When I went to Iran, you have to do military conscription once you’re 18 to [be able to] leave the country. So, we had to do time. That’s where I met our drummer, Kami. And Kami was a childhood enemy of mine. We used to compete over the girls in our neighborhood, so we never really liked each other.

When I say military, it’s not like the real military, especially what we went to. It’s this spoiled camp for kids who could afford to buy off the military. We didn’t do the full two years that is mandatory. We only did three weeks, basically. It was just something that was more like a boot camp. It wasn’t a real training or anything.

And we were just really in love with rock and roll. We just got to talking. And Kami said he plays the drums and he has a friend who plays the guitar. He told me that I should join them and do something together. And I was like, “Why not?” He’s like, “What do you play?” I’m like, “Well, I don’t play anything.” He’s like, “Well, since you speak English, you can be the singer.” I’m like, “OK.” I basically just became the singer by default, not because I really knew how to sing or knew how to play any instruments. I just spoke the language.

And since we started off as a cover band as most bands do, we just started playing around in the underground over there as an underground band, just mostly covering songs. The year was 2000, but we were like 10 years behind. Grunge was just happening.

Gaby: That’s too funny. What was the first rock and roll that you remember hearing?

Raam: The first cassette I ever had was Queen. I just had a bunch of bootleg cassettes.

Gaby:  Where do you get those?

Raam: I don’t even really remember how we used to get them. But I remember we would trade at school. Or our parents would come from foreign countries and they would bring us cassettes. Or we’d find stores that sell them underground style. It would be a bakery and then the guy would say, “Give me your coat,” and give you a piece of paper for a list of all the tapes he has. It would be really stupid and really funny at the same time.

Everybody in Iran sat and a person would bring the latest Hollywood films. And the way he would bring them is this guy dresses up really nice and he was carrying a suitcase, like he was going to work, and in his suitcase was a bunch of VHS or Beta tapes.

Gaby: That’s amazing.

Raam: That’s how it was. But then satellite TV came, the Internet came. Everything became, obviously, instantaneous. And everybody had access to everything all the time. Then we caught up. It was just overnight we really caught up with everything. All of a sudden there was this big bridge to everything that they never had access to, so people kept downloading. And downloading as much as they could, everything they’d missed.

Gaby: Were you like, “This is an English band or an American band? This is cooler by definition?”

Raam: I think it’s part of the nature of where we were from. It’s a subconscious form of rebellion to the traditional sounding, really awful music we would hear on the radio. And we grew up listening the The Ramones, NOFX, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Sonic Youth.

Gaby: Maybe being ten years behind was actually a blessing.

Raam: I guess so. We just grew up listening to those bands, so that’s what we wanted to sound like. We didn’t want to sound like the junk you would hear on the radio. [Note: In Iran, Raam says, the only music allowed to be widely listened to is traditional and sung in Persian.]

Gaby: Where did you practice if it was illegal?

Raam: Basically an underground room and it was very difficult rehearsing in Iran. You have to soundproof everything. And you have to be careful of neighbors who would rat you out to the authorities.

It was a very Orwellian environment basically, exactly like “1984.” People were always raised in this constant culture of fear and terror. I remember as a kid growing up there you had to lie to your teachers. Your parents would tell you to lie to your teachers. “Don’t tell them we have alcohol in the house, or we’re playing cards, or we watch foreign movies,” because all those things were illegal in Iran. And if you got caught with any of them, the punishment could be a stupid fine, or as severe as being flogged.

Gaby: Does it feel like typical teenage rebellion or something more?

Raam: No, there was no conscious form of rebellion whatsoever. It was just us wanting to rock the fuck out. We just wanted to play as loud as we could wherever we could.

And wherever we were given the opportunity to perform, we played at this senior party where the average age was 70 and above. Or this 14 year old girl’s birthday party. Wherever people would let us play or perform for them, we’d play. Even though our music was really crazy. And people would just stand there and look at us like, “What the hell are you doing?” But some of it they would dance to, if they were drunk enough.

Gaby: Is there a punk scene in Iran or were you pioneering that at the time?

Raam: There weren’t that many bands. When we started out, there were very few. And we all knew each other. It was a much smaller scene. Our band became known, because we were the band that played the most shows. I don’t really think anybody played more shows than we did in the scene. Everybody else was more, hype than actual performers. Every show we had to figure out weeks in advance. We had to figure out how to soundproof the place, how to put guards in different parts of the streets and neighborhoods to call us up if the police come up, or have money ready to bribe the police. It was always very planned out to make sure we would never got caught. Whenever we did come getting close to getting caught we had to bail and run away or just bribe the police.

It happened a couple times. It never got really scary in our case. When we played, we were always extra careful. But some of our friends were unfortunate, and when they got caught, they all went to prison for a couple weeks and fined ridiculous amounts.

Gaby: What’s the logic behind that?

Raam: I don’t think it’s so much the music. The Western music supposedly is banned. It’s not really. They play it everywhere. The position of the government is that it’s banned, but it’s really not. There’s Western music everywhere. You can buy it everywhere, actually. It’s really stupid that they have this ban. The logic more is so that if the music, makes people dance. And makes them jump around and move, and then especially when there’s girls and boys mingling.

And then there’s like alcohol and drugs. Forget about it. People are drunk and stoned. Then they start having sex and doing whatever. Basically all these parties and these kids and these groups were deemed as Satanists, as these Satanic parties. That’s what the authorities would always blame it on.

Gaby: You said you guys just wanted to play music and that was it. But you must have been conscious that this is a political move. Or is that something that people in the press pin on you?

Raam: I think it was somehow. Like there were like elements in the music lyrically and in the music, too, that was politically motivated. But for us it was basically about having something to perform and go crazy. Because a lot of the punk bands like the Clash, there were a lot of people that I was always looking up to, and I’m like, “Wow! These guys sing about things that matter! They don’t just sing about random nonsense.”

Gaby: Yeah, that’s what punk is anyway. It seems almost intuitive that a band coming out of that oppressive environment would then gravitate towards punk. It just makes sense.

Raam: Of course. When we started out, we were very punk. We covered punk songs, and we were very garage and grunge. But then we started playing. We got into the whole Britpop thing, and getting into the whole indie and the electro thing. Our band, I don’t even know what the hell we are anymore. We just evolved into this crazy big sound.

The shows in Iran were always an opportunity for us to perform for a bunch of kids who never had the opportunity to see a real live show. A lot of these kids could never leave the country. Because they don’t A: have a passport, or B: can’t get a visa to leave the country.

Nothing even has come close to that feeling, that rush, that excitement, that fear, the adrenaline. All of us in this party just going crazy dancing and performing. There’s a sense of unity among everybody in that specific moment in time and space. Where it was brilliant. It was flawless. Nothing ever came close to that. And it was the best high in the world.

Gaby: But you guys left Iran?

Raam: We realized after playing several years in the undergrounds that we couldn’t do this forever. Either we would have just got caught by the authorities, or would have to pack ourselves up to leave for the West to try to make it as a real band. The first couple years was all fun and games. Then we got better and we grew as a band. We realized that “Hey, we might be on to something. Why don’t we give this a real shot?”

I had been a miserable failure at everything else in my life. I had dropped out of college. I was studying international relations. Change the world for the better or do some boring thing with my life. But I was like, “Fuck it! I’ll be a rock star and I’ll change the world.” When we set out on this journey to America, we didn’t know what to expect. And we had no idea what we were in for.

It was March 2007 when we came to the States. Several months before we had been to a festival in Europe, in Holland. And we heard about this festival in the United States called “South by Southwest.” We decided to apply. And then we were back in Iran. We got this email from Southwest. “You’ve been accepted to showcase,” and it was the greatest day of our lives, really to see that. Wow! We finally have this opportunity to go and perform outside of Iran. We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into.

We never even said goodbye to anyone, because we didn’t even think we’d stay here for this long. It’s almost been four-and-a-half years or something. We’ve been in the States. We just left with a guitar, a suitcase, and a couple hundred dollars each.

Gaby: You had some trouble with getting visas though, right?

Raam: The deputy ambassador [of the US Consulate in Dubai] was like, “Don’t worry. I’ll get it ready for you guys, so you’ll make it to the festival.” He’s like, “Just give me a call the next day, and we’ll take care of it.” And I give him a call. He doesn’t pick up. I email him. He doesn’t reply. We just wait. And as the days go, we realize we’re going to miss the festival. And we eventually we do miss the festival. And finally the visas do come through like on the 20th, or the 22nd.

And that day, I go to pick up the passports and the visa. I realize I had missed an email I hadn’t read. And it was the deputy ambassador. He had sent three weeks ago. And I had never read the email for some reason. And he had said, “Your visas are ready. Come pick them up.” Basically we missed the festival because of my stupidness of not reading the email.

But the funniest thing in that sort of story and that twist of fate is that the New York Times and MTV wanted to do a small story about us, including like the international acts in “South by Southwest.” When they finally heard that we finally made it to New York, they called us up. And instead of having just a small story written about us, they both did like a full feature story on us. As soon as we landed, on our first show that we played here.

And when those stories came out in the New York Times and MTV, that’s when everything changed for us. All of a sudden, that day when I got up and the story was out, all we had was the website that had an email on it. Nothing else. And there were like thousands of emails.

Gaby: I think it’s got all the elements of a perfect story. I mean, you guys got into “South by Southwest.” It was perilous. “Were we going to make it, were we not?” It’s rock and roll, which everyone loves and relates to. It’s got the political underlying thing, and it’s a couple kids just trying to make it.

Raam: It’s the underdog. And the funny thing is, had we gone to “South by Southwest,” it would have been a different story. Because we sucked so bad when we first came to the States, that they would have just been like, “OK, you can go back home now.” But those stories gave life to our story. The article, New York Times and MTV really kickstarted our career, because we got so much attention.

But at the same time, I felt quite undeserving of all this attention. I was really overwhelmed. I knew how bad we were. I’m like, “Jesus Christ, these people don’t care about the music, obviously!” It’s just a human interest story for them. And I felt really bad secretly, that there was so much attention to us. And yet we had no talent whatsoever.

Gaby: Maybe people were more into admiring the guts that went behind even just attempting. That’s like a big part of it. Four years later, you’re like, “No, we have to be a good band.”

Raam: That’s the thing about America. It is the land of opportunities. But over here you have to earn your way to the top. And we’ve been learning that, the past four years. It’s been a crazy ride, to be honest with you. The rise and falls that we’ve had. As a band from Iran we were like the first to break all of the records that have ever been set. We’ve done everything that no other band from Iran has ever done. In a way we’re like pioneers. And we’re very proud of that.

But in comparison, we’re way behind in terms of where we want to be compared to all the artists that we look up to. We feel that we’re equally as good if not better than many of these acts. We’re such hard workers. We rehearse five, six hours every day. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band rehearse as much as we did in the past couple years. We always practiced in the mornings, too. I’d never seen any other bands practice in the mornings.

Gaby: After SXSW, what did you do?

Raam: Basically the first year or so, we were just playing around in New York. Then went to L.A. We were very fortunate to meet some very wealthy entrepreneurs and very successful people, very generous, who helped us out. If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have been able to survive. People who helped make the first album come to life. And living in L.A. was an experience of its own, because you get caught up with all the madness and the celebrity.

And then we played this big festival there called Pangea Day, which was broadcast to something like 500 million people. And backstage there were all these celebrities that we were hanging out with. After that, we got a lot of buzz and you were hanging out at all these famous peoples’ homes. And it was just really crazy, all the things that we were going through.

It was all happening so fast. All the attention and all the fame we were getting was much more than what we were actually worth, I felt. I really saw we hadn’t reached that point. All of a sudden we were getting known, but musically we still weren’t there.

So we moved back to New York [in 2008], and then we went on a national tour with the “Sisters of Mercy,” a big ’80s Goth band. And it was really funny, because people started calling us Goth. And we’re like, “We’re not Goth, but thanks.” [laughter]

The first album was recorded in 2008 but it came out in 2010. And that really hurt us, because the negotiations took forever. There were different labels that were interested, so that was one of the lessons we learned the hard way in this industry. It’s everything. This whole industry is moving and evolving at such a fast rate. You have to be constantly delivering, constantly be on top of your game. You can’t just wait around for anything to happen.

And then we went on tour that winter, which is December. And even now, we get to play in front of thousands of people and the finest venues. Backstage we had champagne and steak and fruit. We were treated like royalty. We had such a great time on that tour, and you get spoiled. And the next week you go. You’re playing in front of nobody. “Oh, shit!” And the big tour, we sold out everything. Our CDs, and, T-shirts. That was huge. Then again, you go to another tour. Some cities are good. It’s very unpredictable, this whole game. It’s been a really crazy ride.

Gaby: You didn’t say goodbye when you left Iran. Then you started getting all this press and fame and now people in Iran know what you’re up to…

Raam: Right. And in the beginning, I have to tell you that I was very diplomatic. Although I was speaking my mind, and speaking out even against the government, I wasn’t doing it in such a rash and forward way. I’ve become a little bit more even outspoken than before, since the 2009 election. First, at the end of the day, any opinions that I have, because I get asked questions a lot about the nuclear issue. I’m like, “What do you want me to say?”

[They say,] “About your situation! Stand up to Iran.” I’m just like, a guy who enjoys music, and I’m a news junkie. I follow the news, but I’m no political analyst. Any opinions that I do have only represent my personal experience. It’s not something that you can generalize or apply to an entire nation. Iran is a very complex society with complex people. It’s not as black and white as, “Do all Iranians hate Americans? Or do all Americans this or that?” I think the most interesting thing for me always has been just touring across America, especially in the Midwest. And we hear stereotypes about people over there. They hear stereotypes about us.

Honestly, there’s so many points where I would just flip out and I would be like, “I’ll be so close to giving up.” Because I felt it is just so difficult sometimes. I just wanted to go back home to Iran, because I miss Iran so much. I miss my family. I miss my life, but I realize that that place that I miss so much doesn’t exist anymore. The government has become so oppressive, that it’s just not the Iran that I remembered anymore. It’s literally turning into a full on totalitarian dictatorship basically. People have no more say in government, unfortunately.

We do American press though. We never do Iranian press. They suck and they tend to over-politicize everything. It’s like, “Who’s side are you on? Which party do you follow?” We didn’t really want to get into that. I’ve just always been of the school of thought of I respect whatever the people demand and respect their most fundamental basic human rights. Allow them to vote. Allow them to enjoy the same fundamental freedoms that everyone else can enjoy around the world. Very simple, very basic, that’s what I believe in. And everyone should be allowed to have a say in government. I may not like many of the religious point of views, but they should have their voice also. Everyone should have a voice in government.

And it was after the 2009 elections where the people were robbed of their votes, and we all started joining together for protest in front of the UN over here. And we organized a whole bunch of protests. I was a part of most of them. And I, with a group of other Iranian musicians, wrote this song. Johnny B actually, he wrote this song. He’s a friend of mine, an Iranian-American kid. It was called “Freedom, Glory, Be Our Name.” It’s called the Freedom Guard project. And that song’s very political a very straightforward political song. It’s for the green movement, for the people of Iran. Now that song, because of that we got into “Time” magazine and CNN.

I had to do interviews with The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. It came out and it was in the press a lot. But this time, it was largely politically motivated.

But I just felt really powerless, seeing all my brothers and sisters back home, being in the streets.

There was just this feeling of I have to sit here and watch them getting beat up on YouTube. I just wanted to show that we are standing in solidarity with them. And it’s like the least that I could do. And it’s a very small contribution compared to what everyone else is.

I never want to come across as a preachy person. It’s just something that has to happen organically. That definitely was a setback that we realized that, “OK, maybe we can never actually go back home after this.”

Gaby: When did you know for sure you were never going back to Iran?

Raam: As the situation got worse in Iran, I just kept doing more interviews. And I was just more involved with the people’s movement. And whether it was online, sharing information, sending out emails, and signing petitions. I became quite active. And then I went and did an interview on [Voice of America]. There’s a show called “Parazit.” “Parazit” is like the Iranian Jon Stewart. They have 500,000 fans on Facebook and they’re watched by 40 million people a month.

If you go on that show in Iran, and they’re like basically an anti-governmental show, speaking out against the government’s brutality. Basically if you go on that show, you are automatically on the blacklist for never going back home.

Gaby: And you went on that show?

Raam: I went on that show. I didn’t do it for a long time. They asked me to come for the longest time. I would never go. But I finally decided to do it. And it was crazy, because I got thousands of emails after it. Almost every single Iranian on the planet watches that show.

I realize that once I go on this show, this is it. If I go on this show, this is the end of me going back to Iran. Because my friends with much less records than mine, they went back and their passports were taken away at the airport.

Gaby: That’s interesting that you decided to do it anyway.

Raam: Yeah. I realized that now, as an artist, you have a responsibility to speak out and speak your mind.

Gaby: What did you say?

Raam: I just talked about, on a very personal basis, how I believe that people who use religion as a context to oppress or enforce their own belief. And enforce their own way of living upon others. I’m not a religious person myself at all.

I’m a complete atheist. I have respect for religious people. I just don’t like the way that the religion is abused in a country like Iran to enforce or to oppress the people. It’s just absolutely wrong. I remember I got beat up in school in Iran, because I brought a Walkman to school. And my teacher said that it’s forbidden in Islam, or by the Koran. I’m like, “Sir, I’m pretty sure there were no Walkmans around when this book was written.” And I got my ass beat up for making that remark.

Gaby: That’s a little sassy.

Raam: But that’s what I’m saying. There’s this group of vigilante police in Iran, who are not even approved by the government, only by the Supreme Leader. They have no proper authority, but yet they have this almost divine authority from the Supreme Leader. And these people, the Basij, this vigilante militia, they have this right to right the wrongs that they see as unfit to their way of living or their way of life. They spend so much time beating up kids who dress in a certain way, or wear makeup instead of actually cracking down on criminals and drug smugglers.

It’s ridiculous. The number of kids who get beat up for just looking different or dressing different or listening to music, things that are not even a crime anywhere else in the world. They’re not even anything of any importance to anyone. They’re not even harming anybody.

Gaby: Your parents are still there.

Raam:  Yes.

Gaby: Can they come here?

Raam:  Yeah, because they have dual Canadian citizenship.

Gaby: Why don’t they move here?

Raam: My parents love Iran. They would never move anywhere else.

Gaby: I was noticing that you’re like, “I’m not really a political person.” But then you just discussed it so easily. If you talk to an American kid and they say, “I’m not really into politics.” They would really not be into politics. Do you know what I mean? There’s a different obligation to at least know something and to be interested in it, even just for the fact that your parents are still there.

Raam: I always tell my friends I’m like, “You guys are so privileged. You have it so well. Sometimes you forget, and you take your freedoms for granted.”

Gaby: What’s next for your music?

Raam: Now I’ve recorded my solo album, in Persian, and it’s going to come out pretty soon. And I’m very excited. I think it’s going to be huge, to be honest. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like it in this language. I’m going to release it for free, actually. And people can just download it. And the reason I’m putting it out for free is all the kids back home in Iran want to listen to it. They don’t have access to iTunes.

But I don’t care [about money]. The joy that they get from the music is so great, I wouldn’t trade that for anything. …Well, I wouldn’t mind some nice caviar and champagne.

Gaby: Ha!

Raam: Hey! A man can dream.