Poison Ivy

Chapter Eight: Batman or your Army

I stared at Andy who was sitting on the sofa next to me.

The interview room did indeed have no chair for me to sit on so I resorted to pressing myself against the arm of the sofa, hoping that I could fork enough distance between Andy and myself, that hopefully, he wouldn't try anything else.

Andy had nowhere to rest his legs due to the lack of coffee table, so he just kicked them up under himself, crossing them.

Luckily it was a dull day today, so there would be no sunshine bursting through the blind-less bay window.

I thought back to last night and sighed.

"What'd you do to the blinds?" I asked, arching an eyebrow.

Andy smirked and shrugged. "I wanted to take a smoke and when I was pulling them up, the stupid things twisted on themselves and they fell down when I tried to untwist them."

I rolled my eyes and Andy simultaneously rolled his, mocking me.

"I would have gone to reception and reported them, but then they'd know I was in here last and all sorts of questions would be fired at me. I can't lie, you see." He winked and I groaned.

"That was a mistake."

"You make a lot of those?"

I nodded "I'm making one now by interviewing you again.  I should have just said no."

"But that's the thing, Ivy," Andy's lips tugged upwards in amusement. "You can't refuse me."

I scoffed. "My mind was all over the place, you'd messed with me in the interview and I wasn't thinking straight. If I had been, last night would have never happened so don't flatter yourself."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," he smirked "Or not, as the case happened to be."

"Imbecile." I muttered, clenching my fists and loosening them again. "Can we get this thing over with, again,please?"

"I suppose..."

I groaned, staring hard at Andy. He chuckled, raising his hands in front of him, and shook his head. "You're way too easy to annoy."

I rolled my eyes and pulled out my interview pad – a feeling of déjà vu washing over me causing me to shudder – Andy eyed my intrigued, arching an eyebrow. I ignored him and continued.

"Ready?"

"Shoot."

I clicked the lid of my pen and scribbled a little in the corner of the pad to make sure it was working before beginning.

"Now, we're gonna start with some fan questions, is that okay with you?"

Andy nodded and I flipped to the page with the questions. "On twitter, FallenAngelAbi said a huge thanks for being a great inspiration and her question was where do you start when writing a song, what's your first thought?" I looked up at Andy and his lips turned upwards as he answered.

"Well, there isn't something I'll immediately think of when I decide to write a song. It's not like my mind decides; Oh, I'll write a song and I'll need a title, I'll need lyrics that fit, I need a good bass line, what about possible acoustic covers?; no, it doesn't work like that. When writing a song you need to use your heart, and you need to let your emotions take control. You can't head straight in and leave that all behind because, yes, it'll be finished quicker, but it'll seem manufactured and dead."

"So you need emotions," Andy gave a confirming nod. "But not just your emotions?" I pressed, hoping he'd expand.

He obliged and continued. "Not at all, no. That's the thing with being in a band. Each of us will open our hearts and let our thoughts and feelings into the album and songs, and it may not be a case of all five of us working on the songs lyrically, but even with the music on top of, we still need to use our emotions. You can't have a song without melody."

"So you need to put emotions into the drum line?" I asked slightly confused but greatly interested.

Andy gave a satisfied smirk and inhaled slowly before exhaling. "How can I put it so that you all understand?" he thought for a moment and I was sure his last statement was more aimed at me than to his fans and future readers of this interview.

"Okay. Here's the thing, when we worked on Saviour there was a lot of unspoken passion and emotion in the band and we fuelled that into the actual song, but not just the lyrics. We used our feelings in the musicality of it, for example, each guitar riff and each beat of the drum meant something to us all personally and that's what makes a good song. Emotion. Whether it's heartache, love or just something we've laughed about previously – a minor joke – we'll use it in our music."

I nodded slowly understanding what he was saying.

"That's something." I said and he cracked a smile. "So what about song titles? Where do they come in?"

"Generally at the end of writing the song. We can't just come up with a song title and think we need to fit the lyrics to this because in all honesty, that seems impossible. I've not met anyone who's written successful music with that mindset." He shrugged and I scrawled it all down.

"Mhm, BVBArmyForever wants to know who do you love more, Batman or your Army?" I raised an eyebrow, a smile slack on my lips as I looked back up at him.

"That's a good question, definitely Batman." He laughed and I rolled my eyes, jotting it down.

"In all seriousness though, the army know they got us to where we are now and they know how grateful we are. We do this for them."

"You love your fans a lot, don't you?" I grinned and he stared at me blankly. "What?" I asked self-consciously.

"Nothing, you're just grinning at me... it's strange." He smirked and I scowled.

"Moving on. Your new album, you've held it back... why?"

"It's not done yet. We're perfecting it, and whilst we realise it'll never be upmost perfect, we will work towards that." he stated.

"I thought you didn't think in terms of perfect? What about the fact that this is your year? It can't be if you're holding things back."

"It is our year, as is the next." Andy replied defiantly, crossing his arms across his chest, a smug grin etched on his face.

"What makes you so certain?" I challenged, equally defiant.

"We're Black Veil Brides. It's fool proof."

P.S. Watch the video to the side if you haven't already... seriously, I can't begin to describe how much respect I hold for this man and the rest of the band and that right there is one of the reasons.