Regulus Black and The Marauders

SIRIUS: I was nothing short of confused when my estranged little brother waltzed into my home with packed bags asking to join my band.

REGULUS: I was so nervous I almost threw up. I didn’t seem to remember the fact that they could say no. 

SIRIUS: We talked through everything. Had a little heart to heart. We both cried.

REGULUS: I don’t cry. 

SIRIUS: I had my brother again. 

JAMES: My parents took him in too. Now we were a family of five. 

PETER: None of us had a problem with Regulus. He started off by saying he wanted to be called Regulus Black and The Marauders though.

REGULUS: I gave the same reasons Lily did, but really, I didn’t want to meddle in what belonged to my brother. Yes, we were reunited and whatnot. But I still felt distant. I didn’t want to ruin them. 

REMUS: We looked at his songs. He had three, I think? 

REGULUS: “All Too Well”, “Sad Beautiful Tragic”, and “Better Man”. I asked if anyone else wrote, and to my surprise, James nodded.

SIRIUS: At that point, we’d been egging him on to share his music with us for ages. But he still seemed skeptical. 

JAMES: I didn’t want people to hate it. So I said I’d show him if he showed me. He played all three. And God, they were good. 

I was so nervous. 

I had a few songs I had been working on, most of them your typical love songs about Lily. But his songs… they made me feel something. And I only had one of those. 

… 

REGULUS: He played one called “Forever Winter”.

JAMES: I wrote “Forever Winter” about Sirius. Like I said before, I don’t know everything that happened to him. I know enough.

And there was… a period of time where I was worried if he’d want to stay in a world where he was so unhappy at home. 

I wanted him to give all that pain to me. 

I’ve had a good life. I have a good life. And that’s because Sirius is in it. Without him, I don’t know what I’d do. 

REMUS: James all of a sudden whips out this masterpiece of a song.

SIRIUS: It… I’m honored by the fact that there’s even a song about me. That feels great. But that one?

…

…

…

He’s right. I did have… a time where I wasn’t sure if I totally wanted to be alive. I didn’t know what to do in a world where the people who were supposed to care for me hurt me. Abused me. 

I just… he’s my soulmate. James. In a way that whatever souls are made, we were made in the same damn batch.

PETER: So after the rest of us talentless losers heard Regulus and James’s masterpieces, we let Regulus in and got to work. First, we learned how to play the songs they had, and recorded them. Then, we sent them off to write more while the rest of us positively harassed every record label we could with our tape. 

JAMES: I asked what we should write about and they said whatever. So off we went.

REGULUS: It was not… smooth. I had an idea of what we should write, and he had a different idea. We’re both stubborn. He had these little love songs, and I had sad songs. 

JAMES: I asked why we couldn’t do both. 

REGULUS: I really didn’t want to listen to him droning on and on about Lily for a whole album. 

JAMES: I was getting kind of pissed off. I wasn’t saying, “Hey, let’s make this a Lily album”. I was thinking we should write it together. 

REGULUS: Our writing processes were… different. I expected us to argue through the whole thing, but we didn’t. 

JAMES: It was oddly simple. Honestly, it kind of freaked me out.

I had tried to write stuff with Lily, but it’d always end in arguments. But not with him. 

We started out with some notes I had been messing around with. He started humming.

REGULUS: I said something like, “What a great tune”.

JAMES: “I said, ‘Oh my, what a marvelous tune’”

I sang that, and it just took off from there. I honestly don’t know how it happened, but we finished the song in three hours. We didn’t move. Didn’t eat. Nothing. 

REGULUS: It was crazy. 

PETER: Call me a nutter, but it’s my favorite song on “RED”. I believe kids nowadays call it a “bop”. 

SIRIUS: While James and Regulus were writing music, we were busting our asses trying to get anybody to listen to us. 

PETER: Now that I think about it, a more traditional way to get a record deal would have been to play shows at crusty pubs or whatever. But we were never the brightest of the bunch. 

REMUS: I literally told them we should play in pubs. They’re a bunch of stubborn bastards. If they ever complain about someone being stubborn, so were they. 

SIRIUS: Nobody would listen to us. 

PETER: I mean, imagine three nineteen year olds walk in. I look normal, Sirius looks like he’s in some motorcycle gang, and Remus is dressed like an eighty-five year old librarian. 

Would you listen to us if we told you we had “a great band”?

JAMES: After three months of absolutely nothing, we went out drinking. At this point, we had written “Everything Has Changed” and cleaned up “Better Man”. We needed a drink.

PETER: I swear, we’d have nothing if it weren’t for my beauty and brawn. So I’m ordering my drink, and this really fit girl catches my eye. I’m the perfect amount of drunk at this point, so I buy her a drink and start chatting her up. And of course, I tell her I’m in a band. 

KELLY YOON (Former Tour Manager, Gillyweed Records): He was hilarious. I had just started out as a tour manager, and we were always on the lookout for new talent. I mean back then, Gillyweed was small. We needed a big break.

[laughs]

But looking at them, they didn’t look like a big break. They all looked like they were dressed for different events. 

SIRIUS: I could feel in my bones that Kelly Yoon was our ticket to getting a deal. I told Kelly Yoon we’d play her our songs. This pub had a small little setup with all the instruments we needed. 

KELLY: I had nothing to do. I stayed. 

REGULUS: I felt my heart pounding in my chest. I was so excited. I felt it. This was it. 

JAMES: I threw up in the loo. I was so scared. Playing for my friends was bad enough. Now a whole crowd and a record to judge? I was horrified. 

PETER: I rounded the troops and we decided to play all we had. So we squished onto that tiny little stage and James started playing the first chords to “Everything Has Changed”. 

KELLY: There is a common misconception that people born without talent can be stars. Technically, they can be. And good God do they have to fight for it. But these boys… all of them possessed it. Despite having wildly different aesthetics, they had the aura of a rockstar. Of stars. 

From the moment their first song ended, I knew I had to show Albus. I mean, the writing. Regulus’s voice. Once in a lifetime. 

And their stage presence. There were maybe fifty people in that pub. But they got every last person on their feet and dancing.

Do you know how rare that is?

SIRIUS: I was drenched in sweat and nerves by the time we were done. I was so nervous.

REMUS: I was literally gripping the neck of the bass so tightly I was sure I’d break it. 

REGULUS: We’re all looking at Kelly with big, wondrous eyes. 

JAMES: And then she handed us a card with a time and date scrawled on it in loopy cursive.

PETER: She wanted us to play for Albus. 

KELLY: I only had two requests. One, I wanted at least two more songs. And three, I wanted them to add something to “All Too Well”. It was a great song then. But I knew there was something to make it the best song. 

SIRIUS: So we packed up our shit and went home to get writing.