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" How did you first get into music? When we were 15, my brother and I were getting really into Nirvana, Green Day, and The Beastie Boys. We started going to shows and realized we really wanted to be on stage. Around the same time, I went to my school talent show and some kids had a cover band. I couldn&amp;#039;t believe they were right in front of me and they sounded so much like the band. It looked like so much fun, and I was like, I want to start my own band! Do you and your brother, Benji, ever fight? We fight a lot! Over dumb stuff, like, he&amp;#039;ll borrow something of mine and then lose it. Then we&amp;#039;ll sit down to write and I&amp;#039;ll still be thinking about the fact that he lost my favorite shirt. It&amp;#039;s usually over in about an hour though. That&amp;#039;s funny...But you guys have managed to stay together for 11 years. What has kept you guys going for so long? We have really great fans and a great manager who has been with us this whole time. We all love each other, and we love what we do. We&amp;#039;re all like brothers. We are really honest with each other and we keep it really-if one of us isn&amp;#039;t happy, we work it out. It&amp;#039;s like a relationship, you know? You gotta do what you gotta do to make your girlfriend happy. Speaking of girlfriends, was it hard hearing about your love life all over the news? I just live my own life and I don&amp;#039;t read any of the magazines. I sometimes go to pinkisthenewblog and perezhilton.com to check it out, but I don&amp;#039;t pay too much attention. I think it would drive me crazy if I did, so I mostly stay away from it. Are there other aspects of fame that have been hard for you and the other guys? Well, we come from a genre in which success and fame are kind of looked down upon, so all of the attention made us a little uncomfortable at first. It definitely took some time for us to grow into our own skin and get used to it all. How exactly have you grown? I&amp;#039;ve grown a lot as a singer and a songwriter, but also as a person. I communicate better with my band, and our relationships are stronger and closer. I&amp;#039;ve done a lot of self-improvement-I&amp;#039;m always working on being a better person.  Turn to page 36 of our April 2007 issue for more of our interview with Joel Madden! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/q-and-a/a210/joel-madden-qa-0407/>