Friday, July 6, 2007 | 6:56 a.m.
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS MORRIS
Who: Smash Mouth
When: 8 p.m. today and Saturday
Where: Las Vegas Hilton Theater
Tickets: $35 to $40; 732-5755
"Astro Lounge," 1999
"Smash Mouth," 2001
"Get the Picture?" 2003
"Summer Girl," 2006
Smash Mouth has an image problem.
Is the band punk? Rock? Surf? Retro? Pop? A cover band?
The first "Shrek" didn't help. The film featured Smash Mouth's version of Neil Diamond's "I'm a Believer," which had been a hit for the Monkees in 1966 and became a hit all over again for Smash Mouth. It also featured the band's 1999 hit "All Star."
Steve Harwell, a former rapper, founded the group in San Jose, Calif., in 1994 with guitarist Greg Camp, bassist Paul De Lisle and Kevin Coleman, the first in a string of drummers.
The group first gained national attention in 1997 with "Walkin' on the Sun," a retro-sounding party song with an infectiously cheesy organ riff and lyrics straight out of the 1960s. The band has toured constantly.
Harwell, who moved to Las Vegas last year, is launching a line of children's clothing at the end of July. It will be called, appropriately, Mr. Mouth.
Harwell recently talked - almost nonstop - to the Sun.
My best friend from childhood ended up moving here and he was always raving about it. "You got to move to Vegas. You got to move to Vegas." I go, "I'm not moving to Vegas. I'm from San Jose, you know." But we were on tour, with Lenny Kravitz I believe, and we landed here and my friend was living about a mile from where I'm at now. He told me to come over and I said, "OK, I'll come check it out." I said, "It's pretty cool." He said, "Call this real estate lady. She's the one who sold me my house." So I called her and we went looking next day - me and my girlfriend, who is now my wife - and we found this place in The Estates here in Green Valley.
It was like the second house in here. There was nothing in here at that time. It was like a new development. We fell in love with the house. It was like the first brand - new house I ever bought. It was like wow! This is it. OK. I'm here in Vegas. I bought me a house, you know. Rock 'n' roll.
Do you like Vegas?
There are a lot of things I love about it, but there are a lot of things I don't like about it. But that's every city you live in. My wife loves it here, which is kind of weird. She's like from Florida. She lived in Costa Rica for 10 years. But she loves it here.
What was it like coming to Vegas from the Bay Area?
It was culture shock. I like it here, but we talk about moving. We still look for property. Regardless, I'll keep my place here because we like it. I haven't made a ton of friends here. My brother's here and we're close. I have three or four people I hang out with. But I don't hang out with a lot of people because when I'm home my wife and I hang out a lot together. I don't have a large group of friends. All my closest friends who I grew up with are in the Bay Area. I would move back there in a minute, to a certain area. Not to San Jose, but an hour or two from there, maybe Paso Robles, down near San Luis Obispo. I like it there.
With your kind of career you can live almost anywhere. Do you still do a lot of touring or do you focus more on recording?
We've gotten to the point where we've toured for so long and so hard, going constantly. We've got to the point where we don't have to tour like we used to, and we don't want to . Most of us are married. People are thinking, "Ah, the rock star lifestyle." Well, it's a lot of work. It takes a toll on you.
But do you still enjoy it?
I love it. We've been off a week and a half or two weeks. Now we've got these two shows coming up at the Hilton and then we have a run of shows on tour. But the most we go out now would be two weeks. That's a solid pace. Sometimes the girls come out, but for the most part when the boys go out the boys go out. We go to work. We don't go out as often as we used to for as long as we used to. For the rock 'n' roll thing sometimes the wives like to come out on tour. But to be completely honest with you it's twice as much work to have your spouse out with you on the road. You have to wait around for that blow dryer to stop.
Your group has been together 10 or 11 years. Do things get strained at times?
It's like a marriage. Paul De Lisle, myself and Greg Camp. When I started the band they were the first two members I brought in , so we are the founding members. We've been through a couple of drummers. But anyway, it's like a marriage. You have your times when you want to get a divorce. You have a time maybe when you've got to separate for a while, so we did that. We took some time off and did our own thing.
Are you doing any recording?
We're getting ready to get back into the studio. Greg, he's our main writer, he said : "Dude, I've got the itch. I'm writing some good stuff." I go, "Cool." When I hear him say he's excited about working on some new stuff, I'm excited. So we're getting ready to do some new stuff.
What effect did the movie "Shrek" have on the group?
Good and bad. We started out as a punk band, pretty much, then when "Shrek" happened, it opened a different world. One minute I'm the punk rock tattooed guy who had "Walkin' on the Sun" and all these other songs , and then when our music gets in the movie "Shrek" it changes things. Now it's, "Oh, you're the 'Shrek' band" and "You're the kids' movie band." You struggle with that a little bit, but that happens with every artist who does anything like this. There are good parts and bad parts. But probably 99 percent positive comes out of it.
Will this be your first performance at the Hilton?
Yeah. We've performed here in Vegas many times, just never played that particular room, and I'm really excited about it. It's were Elvis had, I believe, over 800 performances, and Elvis is the reason I ever picked up a microphone. When I was a kid my parents went, "Why are you so into Elvis?" My friends would be outside riding bicycles and I'm in there watching Elvis Week on Channel 2. He was my idol. I don't have an Elvis shrine in my home like some Elvis fans, but I can watch his DVDs till 4 in the morning - watching how he moves, how he controlled people. He was the greatest entertainer ever. I tell people that. I truly am in this business because of Elvis Presley. I'm hoping Elvis channels me for two nights so I have amazing shows.
What can fans expect at your show?
When you go see Smash Mouth, be prepared to go to a party. You're going to feel like you've gone to a party. I like everybody to leave there laughing. I really interact with the audiences. I make the audience part of the show. It's just a fun time. You can't fake the fun we're having up there.
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