Famed for having Rushmore and Shopgirl actor Jason Schwartzman in their ranks, five-piece Phantom Planet were one of the standout indie pop-rock bands of the early 2000s.
Together with Schwartzman’s Keith Moon-esque drumming and the group’s anthemic California – taken from their breakthrough 2002 album, The Guest – which became the theme song to popular TV teen drama The O.C., the band were poised for the big time. But just as they began to lift off, Schwartzman departed to take up acting full time.
“Jason leaving to pursue acting really made us have to restructure,” says Alex Greenwald, the band’s vocalist and rhythm guitarist. “Also, the music I was making after he left wasn’t as commercial as The Guest.”
The band soldiered on with a new drummer through two more albums before calling an indefinite hiatus in 2008. Despite undertaking a handful of low-key reunion shows in the early 2010s, it wasn’t until 2020 that the newly re-formed group – albeit without Schwartzman and original rhythm guitarist Jacques Brautbar – released 2020’s Devastator.
The album showcased the band owning their past while simultaneously moving forward. With the recently re-issued and re-recorded 2023 version of California, the band is back to full-time duty.
“Two years ago, we started the process of re-recording the songs from The Guest,” Greenwald says. “I wanted to re-record the album in the same exact way we recorded the original, so we recorded at the same studio and used the same guitars.”
Now streamlined to just a two-guitar format with fellow six-stringer Darren Robinson, Greenwald’s plans to recapture the original’s sonic spirit almost got derailed when his $100 1998 Epiphone SG Junior (which was used on the original album) went missing in action for more than a decade.
“In 2005 I loaned the guitar to a musician friend,” he says. “He later told me he had returned it to his parents’ house, but they said they never received it, and so it remained lost.
“In 2019, I randomly walked into a thrift store in the Valley – and behind the counter was my guitar! I told the cash-register woman, ‘You won’t believe this, but that’s my favorite guitar that I played 20 years ago!’ And she was like, ‘How do you know it's yours?’
“I had carved my first initial – A – on the back of the guitar, so I asked her to turn it around. And when she did, it was definitely my guitar! The guitar was missing strings and a bridge, so it needed some love. I asked how much it cost, and she said $25. I paid it and got my guitar back.
“I asked her when the guitar had come in, and she told me to ask the guy who receives the donations at the back of the store. He said an old man with grey hair had brought the guitar in just before closing time the night before. I was like, ‘When does this store open?’ He said 10:30 a.m. I had just come in at 11:30 a.m., so it had been behind the counter for only an hour!”
Greenwald feels that his guitar playing has improved by leaps and bounds over the past 20 years.
“As I’ve learned more, I’ve played more to the subtleties of the instrument,” he says. “In my 20s, I would just be strumming as hard as I could. Now, though, there are tons of dynamic ranges that are more impactful and where I can balance the quiet and loud dynamics and everything in between.”
- California (The O.C. Theme) is out now via GONG.
