When I moved to New York City from Israel, I came here with the idea to get a great job, have tons of fun, and make a lot of money. Growing up in Israel, I watched a lot of American TV, and I thought it's what the 'cool' people did, and I wanted the same thing.
We had a huge audience, we sold truckloads of albums. If we do something that's cool, people will listen to it. If we don't, we would be selling people short.
When I started listening to Paramore, I was in high school, and they were, like, 15. Seeing somebody at such a young age have that ambition, I thought, holy crap, they were so young. They seemed like cool people, and I really liked the music.
As a kid, I always idolized entrepreneurs. I thought they were cool people in the way that I thought basketball players were cool people. It's cool that some people get paid to dunk basketballs, but I'm not one of those people.
My parents used to throw great New Year's Eve parties. They invited such an eclectic mix of showbiz people. All those cool people were always hanging out at our apartment.
I don't want to stay underground for just the cool people.
I surround myself with some pretty cool people, and we all have a great time together, and so I just like to hang out with the people I love and see what happens. We always have a good time.
It is a weird feeling to have people go, 'Hey Chris' like they know me. But, number one, 99 percent of my experiences have been really cool. People couldn't be nicer and more positive.