Hogwarts Years - 5
PETER: By the time Lily and James started dating, we were getting pretty good at our instruments. Sirius’s drums didn’t burst my ear drums, and James’s playing didn’t want to make me kill myself anymore. Remus and I, we’ve always been the natural talent of the group. The backbone, if you will.
SIRIUS: Backbone, my ass.
LILY: I knew about The Marauders from the beginning. Not from James, but from Remus. He told me all about learning to master their instruments. And I mentioned something about songwriting.
I told him they were more like glorified poems because I couldn’t play any instruments. But I let him look anyway. I had scraps of “Lily Evans”, including “Cold As You”.
REMUS: I asked her if she could sing.
LILY: I’m not one to shy away from what I’m good at. I was in choir at Hogwarts, and I used to sing at church when I was little.
So I said, “Damn right I am.”
Then he asked if I wanted to learn the guitar and I said yes.
REMUS: And then I asked if she ever wanted to sing for us. And she said yes.
SIRIUS: When Remus pitched the idea that Lily sing for us, I was against it, believe it or not. I love Lils, but would that mean she was a Marauder? I mean, she was our friend, yes, but… I don’t know. I wasn’t a fan. But of course, everyone else was. And I’m a people pleaser. So I agreed.
It was a good time.
And in the end, she didn’t even want to be grouped in with The Marauders.
LILY: I was their frontrunner. So of course I insisted on the name being Lily Evans and The Marauders.
But it was good. A good time of my life.
JAMES: None of us were songwriters. I mean, at the time, I had a few songs floating around in my head. But I wasn’t ready to put that out there. Not yet. So we played covers. Whatever we could get our hands on.
PETER: We played at parties, school-sanctioned events. I mean, there’s not a whole lot of options at boarding school. So we’d play when we had the chance.
SIRIUS: I loved playing Fleetwood Mac.
PETER: ABBA was my favorite.
JAMES: ABBA.
REMUS: We didn’t play it often, but when we played Blondie… great times.
LILY: Carole King. Always my girl Carole.
REGULUS: I wasn’t a part of the band at this point in time. I was still dating Barty when they first started playing at parties and stuff. In March, when Barty dumped me, I started writing “RED”.
I was classically trained in piano, violin, and the harp. Sirius chose ballet instead. That’s a big thing for him. Ask him about his fouettes.
SIRIUS: I could do thirty-three before I quit.
REGULUS: The first song I wrote? “All Too Well”. Again, written after Barty. Most of the album is about him, but we’ll cover that when we get to the “RED” era.
JAMES: We just played covers, and it was nothing serious until we played a seventh year ball. We had already graduated. It was Regulus’s ball, actually.
PETER: None of us knew it, but Poppy Pomfrey was in the crowd. She’s an alum.
POPPY POMFREY (Record Producer, Wiley Records): They were all talented, don’t get me wrong. Killer drums, keys. But you don’t hear a voice like Lily’s every day. And lucky for me, she played one on her own.
LILY: I decided to play “Cold As You” for the first time. I didn’t know Poppy was there.
POPPY: I mean, there wasn’t a dry eye anywhere. Everyone in the room knew that this girl was going to do big things.
So as soon as they were done, I practically snatched her off that stage and offered her a deal.
LILY: Of course I took it. This was what I wanted my whole life. I’d get to travel and do something I loved. I said yes without a moment’s hesitation.
POPPY: And right after everything was signed, she began writing her debut.
JAMES: I was proud of her. Of course I was proud of her. But I wanted that too.
PETER: He was jealous. We all were.
SIRIUS: We were pretty much done. We had no singers.
REMUS: We sat in a corner of the ballroom in a gloom. We weren’t sure what to do.
REGULUS: To this day, I don’t know what gave me the nerve to do it. I heard everything with Poppy and I knew none of them could sing.
I wanted to be a singer. A writer. After writing “All Too Well” and parts of “Sad Beautiful Tragic”, I knew this was what I was meant to do.
And… I missed my big brother.
And I was an adult now. I had no plans to wander back to my parents. So once I graduated, I packed my shit up and went to the Potter’s.
JAMES: I remember it was raining, and he was soaking wet. He had all these suitcases, and he had a thick red book in his hands.
And he asked if we still needed a singer.