PREVIEW Maroon 5 When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22.
Where: Quicken Loans Arena.
Openers: Tinashe, R. City.
Tickets: $30.50 to $126, plus fees, at the box office, online at theqarena.com, at Discount Drug Mart locations and by phone at 1-888-894-9424.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – It’s all about having the right tools in the kit, and that’s as true with music as it is with a race car. Just look at Maroon 5 for proof.
Around 2001, guitarist James Valentine joined a band fronted by Adam Levine that was going by the name of Kara’s Flowers that was formed while they were still in high school. Valentine’s addition and a name shift to Maroon 5 began the transformation.
Now Levine IS the guy behind the wheel. Was then and is now. But having Valentine’s Berklee College of Music background added some RPM to the motor.
“The first time I saw them play, I could see they were a great rock ‘n’ roll band,” said Valentine, calling from his Los Angeles home. “They’d been playing straight-ahead rock up until that, but they were starting to experiment with rhythm & blues and soul influences.
“For me, coming from a jazz background, it gave me a tool kit to really fit in and to complement the band and help them realize that sound,” said Valentine, who at the time was heavily into the music of Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Stevie Wonder and Bill Withers.
“For musicians coming up, I always recommend learning jazz harmony and jazz theory,” he said. “If you can play that, you can play anything,” said Valentine.
It’s clearly been a successful partnership; Maroon 5, which is at Quicken Loans Arena on Wednesday, Feb. 22, has more than 20 million albums worldwide since then.
And yet, the union required a bit of a learning curve.
“I think it was about 10 years in when I started to feel like I’m one of the guys,” Valentine said, laughing. “There was a long hazing period.
“Sometimes, those guys still talk about someone they knew in junior high or were their old friends and once again, I’m the new guy,” he said, mixing a little chuckle with an amused sigh.
Throughout its history – be it as Kara’s Flowers or Maroon 5 – the band has thrived on never remaining stagnant. That’s especially true on an as-yet unnamed album that’s probably due out just before summer. The proof? The first two singles off it “Don’t Wanna Know” and “Cold” featured rappers Kendrick Lamar and Future.
“This is a shift, or at least I think it’s a shift,” said Valentine. “The last record (‘V,’ which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s album charts) was pretty straight-ahead pop.
“Maybe we’re taking a slight turn back toward R&B, and I think everybody’s excited about that,” he said.
Maroon 5 also is well known for its use of guest stars, so the presence of Lamar and Future isn’t that big a surprise.
“You hope for the best and come up for a wish list,” Valentine said of the process for choosing guest artists. “Obviously, Kendrick is at the top of that list. He’s my favorite rapper on the planet right now, and it’s great that he was able to do it.”
The band’s success has had one not-so-surprising consequence: Choosing a set list has become more and more of a challenge.
“On the one hand, it’s pretty easy because we have a well-established catalog of hits – songs people want to hear,” Valentine said. “But that’s where the challenge comes in: rotating in the other songs, the ones the more hardcore fans want to hear.
“Unfortunately, because we are very fortunate to have al these hit songs people expect to hear we can’t play as many of the deep cuts that hardcore fans would like to hear,” he said. “It’s a good problem to have, and I’m not complaining but I guess you can figure out how Bruce Springsteen ends up playing four hours.”
Ah, the obvious solution: the concert equivalent of a bigger toolkit.
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