Biography Note: i made it so please don't steal it but if you do please link me back! The artical from The washington post, and numorours biographies and interveiws contributed to helping me write this

Joel Madden, Billy Martin, Benjamin Madden, and Paul Thomas grew up in a town called La Plata south of Maryland, Waldorf. They attended La Plata Highschool and the twin graduated in 07' and billy was still in highschool when they were recording their first album (but he comes in the story later). Their scars from the tourments of high school still are in them. Benji constantly got made fun of for his black nailpolish, and one time joel got taped to a gym locker room bench and foot ball players rubbed benjay where it really shouldn't have been rubbed. " 'Did you guys make it big yet?' 'You guys rock stars yet?' Every day, we'd get crank phone calls at our house. They would call and be, like, 'Yeah, we're Atlantic Records and we wanna sign you guys.' My mom would call me--'Joel! Joel! Atlantic Records called! Get home, they want you to call them back!' Then I knew who it was, and I was just, like, man--, those types of things hurt, it's funny now, but back then it sucked."

The twin's father walked out on Christmas Eve and sent their family through a rough time.They were around 21 years old when they made their first "official" album. 4 years before when benji and joel where 17 they went to concerts, including the ill communications tour by the beastie boy and knew this was their carrear path. Joel took up singing and Paul Thomas friends of theirs, along with their school music teacher helped Benji learn how to play guitar. Benji, Joel, Paul, and Aaron (who is now in his brother's band wakefield) started Good Charlotte. Benji says "the big story about their name is that there is no big story." Their big musical influences where the beastie boys, the cure, the smiths, nirvana, greenday, Rancid, NoFX and even some rappers like Missy Elliott, Eminem and New Orleans's Cash Money crew.

Also some old school act who their songs on the first album contain homages to, the Sex Pistols and the Clash, and some bands the twins descovered along the way.But when the twin graduated they didn't want to go to college but to pursue a carrear in music. "It was kind of a hard decision," says Joel. For a graduation presant the tiwin's mom got them a ticket to California and they got newly inspired while staying with their aunt. The guys spent several difficult years working dreary jobs and trying to get some gigs. "We definitely struggled," says Benji.

The twins worked as shampoo boys at an Annapolis hair salon, and before that one or both of them worked at Target, Borders Books, Up Against the Wall and other stores at the local mall, St. Charles Towne Center. The job cycle usually lasted a few months--which is how long it would be before one of the brothers overslept after a gig and got fired. After Benji landed a job waiting tables at the Acme Bar & Grill in Annapolis, the restaurant/club became a regular Good Charlotte venue.

"We made a name for ourselves in that town because we played out everywhere," says Joel. "Every party, every bar. People knew us as the twins that play." While they were playing a gig one night Billy was sitting watching the show and afterward he went and said how good he thought they were.After the twins got kicked out of their apartment, they moved into Billy's house. One night the guys got him to play with them for an impromptu practice. A week later, Billy played his first show with the band. Benji and Joel often crashed on Billy's couch and ate romen noodles.

Annapolis-based WHFS supported the boys from early on, the boys thanked them with their song "Festival Song" from their first album. it was named after the HFStival, at which GC preformed there twice. he station's staffers noticed them playing at an Annapolis bar. Program director Robert Benjamin says he was "smitten" both by their music and by its members. He said, "Benji once told me they wanted to be a combination of the Backstreet Boys and Minor Threat," he says. "They want to be big, they want to be famous, but they also have real punk rock roots, and that's really important."

The station started to play a demo of "Little Things" before the band even had a deal. Benji knew the song would be a hit, "Everybody's a geek in high school--or at least feels like one," he says. "The other part of the appeal is that it all seems real. They're not made-up stories. They grew up in Waldorf, and the album comes off that way. In that way it's very different than the Orange County bratty punk rock bands. This is a little bit more working-class." Even before their radio play, the twins were confident. Early on, the group posed for its first-ever photo shoot (the photographer was the twins' little sister), and the photographs were a part of a promotional package that Benji sent to various record labels. "I wrote, 'You can sign us now for cheaper or you can sign us later,' " he recalls. "We didn't get any responses."

Also around the time of the HFStival they went (unsigned) on tour with Blink 182 and Bad Religion, and opened for Lit on a sold- out East Coast tour. Good Charlotte played charity gigs with equal fervor, ranging from benefits for the Annapolis Rape Center to the Leukemia Foundation.

They found local Benji and Joel the song "Waldorf Worldwide" one of my personal favorites, its a declaration of their frustration with their situation. "We wrote it at a time when we were really broke," says Joel. "I was eating soup for, like, a year because I couldn't afford to go to the dentist." "The only way we got through was daydreaming about making it big," adds Benji. "I knew that all this would happen. From the day we started the band I knew--not in a cocky way, but it was just a feeling. A very comforting feeling. So it was exciting when it happened and it was, like, amazing, and it was really crazy, but it wasn't unexpected." in the spring of 1999 a mailroom worker of Sony's mid-atlantic branch in Beltsville handed one of their demos to regional promotion manager Mike Martinovich. "I couldn't believe these kids that were 19 or 20 years old were writing songs that were so mature, thoughtful and unaffected," says Martinovich. "They were writing about their own lives as they were happening. Almost every song they write is autobiographical. . . . Good Charlotte is very attuned to their surroundings, their family, their friends. This is coming out of suburban America."

Epic's executive vice president of A&R, David Massey, signed the band to the Sony-owned label within a year. "It was one of those signings that was a no-brainer," he says. Massey compares Benji and Joel to other brothers he sighned years ago--Oasis's Liam and Noel Gallagher. "They have similar . . . blue-collar backgrounds, where they made their own luck and created their own opportunity through determination and blind ambition." Benji said he keeps a actually written list of his carrear goals "It's a list of dreams, things I want to do, and every time something happens, I cross it off," he explains. "In the last six months, I've crossed out a lot of things."

Benji and Joel are identical twins who are born 5 minutes apart (Benji is older) but they don't look or act identical, Benji is more outspoken, bold, and has facial piercings. Joel is more quiet and reserved, more chill. But they have been best friends as far back as they can remember. Joel has a tatoo on his chest with praying hands and the name Benji. Benji has a tattoo of a nautical star inside his left arm, with the name Joel. (p.s. benji also has On each shoulder a gc sparrow bird with the word Sara under the right bird, and Josh under the bird on the left side, his brother and sister's names., and "Josh" under the left one for his brother.

Despite their similarities they do disagree sometimes, they have a special releationship. All their song lyrics are true the ones about their parents too. Their mom who lives in nearby Calvert County (i'm not sure where now) said their account of their ubringing was correct. They left numourous phone messages for their dad, and a spokesman for his employer, Giant food said the refused to speak to the press about his sons. "When we were writing the song," says Benji, "I threw in the part about Dad leaving and the part about my mom, and Joel's, like, " 'Dude, I don't wanna sing that.' And I'm, like, 'Dude, it's a good part to the song.' We actually argued over if we should sing about that." Joel says when he's singing "Little Things," he blushes. "It's not because I'm embarrassed totally, it's because it sounds pretty bad. After we wrote the song and I really looked at it, I was, like, 'Whoa. This all sounds pretty bad.' . . . The part about my mom, the part about my dad--that's where it's really sensitive because it's not me anymore, it's someone else." (The boys are close to their mother, who has no objection to the song. "My mom's very cool," says Benji. "She's, like, 'It's the truth, and I'm not ashamed of it.' My mom's the strongest lady that I know.")

The boys say that they were 16 when their father left. Around the same time, their mother was diagnosed with lupus (its wierd my mom has that too), became very sick and had what family members refer to as "a breakdown." a little while after that the family was evicted from its Waldorf home. "Those were little things to us. They weren't big things," says Joel. "People go, 'Oh, those are big things,' but the song is 'Little Things.'"The only thing I cared about in the last two years of high school was the band--that was the big thing. That's probably why we were able to go through those things and consider them little things." "Music is supposed to be an escape," adds Joel. "It's supposed to be somewhere you go, where you can be yourself, or be whatever you want to be. Above anything that happens, we want kids who come see us for that hour to totally forget about high school, to totally forget about everything, to just have an awesome time." Benji said a "girl came to him and told him that her mom died, she palyed the hidden terack on our last record Thank YOu Mom at her funeral i was like, whoa"-he said this recently.

now their 2nd cd is plattinum and came out October 1st. its awsome!!! Personally i listen to Hold On, The Anthem, The Young and the Hopeless, well as many as i can fit in int he morning every morning. They will be touring this spring with New Found Glory, and will appear on the cover on rollingstones, and be on Saterday Night Live soon. Keep supporting them even though they are on trl, don't mind the preppies!