Journal Entry - The Road to "Complicated" "Unwanted", the breakthrough Song / "Complicated", the first hit song (Taken from "The Lavigne Project", Ottawa Citizen, August 17, 2001. Written by Norman Provencher) May 2001 The company was hooking her up with proven writers and song doctors, Fabri was looking for someone who played a similar role that Glen Ballard had played with Alanis Morissette. The problem was, Fabri recalls, the company was fixated on what CEO Antonio “L.A.” Reid saw at Lavigne’s three-song “audition” in October 2000, a performance that Reid had loved. But the three audition songs were not what Fabri and Lavigne were interested in pursuing, even though one of the songs was Lavigne’s very first co-write, a pretty song called Why, which she wrote with award-winning songwriter-producer Peter Zizzo. The audition numbers had a definite New Country flavour and both manager and artist were determined to head out in a tougher, rock-pop direction. “I think the record company was getting worried or upset,” Fabri recalled. “It seemed like we were turning down everything but, even though Avril knew and accepted that we needed the help, the material just wasn’t what we had decided she was going to put out.” The first writer provided by the company on the West Coast turned out to be very much along the lines of the people they had worked with in NYC. “Avril was very stressed out – I promised her she wouldn’t have to go through that again,” Fabri said. He phoned a friend at EMI Publishing in New York, almost begging for a recommendation for a good co-writer for Lavigne. The first suggestion was Clif Magness, an Oscar-nominated writer/producer/musician who’d worked with stars ranging from Barbra Streisand to Cheap Trick. Magness was ideal, Fabri recalls, because Magness knew nothing about Lavigne, so he was carrying no baggage. His attitude was refreshing and I detected instant chemistry between him and Avril. Four hours after they met, Lavigne and Magness had written Unwanted. The song is the antithesis of New Country, featuring “alternative”-type acoustic-guitar-based verses with hard choruses and sprinklings of keyboards and electronica. “We all flipped out,” Fabri recalls. “But I told Clif right away the label was going to hate the song.” Sure enough, when Fabri played the song over his cellphone for John Hecker, boss of Hi-Fi Records in New York, which had been brought into the “Lavigne Project,” Hecker said the label was not going to change formats to accommodate “this rock song.” “I don’t blame John’s attitude, they were just being protective of Avril,” Fabri says now. “The problem was, they didn’t know Avril . ”Unwanted" set the path for the whole "Let Go" CD. For unusual reasons, Fabri and Lavigne were on their own, without the usual record company representatives to ride shotgun, so they decided to fight that country-vs-rock battle another day. Shortly after, they had their first meeting with Arista-supplied songwriters/producers The Matrix, a hot collective featuring Lauren Christy, Graham Edwards and Scott Spock, who, individually or together, had done everything from solo work to songs and production for Christina Aguilera to movie songs. The group had a country-flavoured tune already written at the request of the label, Fabri recalls, and Fabri once again went into his spiel that Avril would not perform anyone else’s songs on this record. She was more than willing to co-write and take advice, but it had to be her material. This time, things were different. For the first time, Fabri had “product” for The Matrix to listen to. “He played Unwanted for them, they were excited and talked to each other for a minute and said they really preferred to write when the artist participates.” That afternoon, the monster hit Complicated, the album’s first single and probably the record’s identifying song, was born. “Everyone who listened to that song knew Avril had just been born, she had a hit song,” Fabri says. “It was a very happy time.” The song, Complicated, was like jet fuel for the Let Go record and the album came in on time and under budget. From about May 2001 until last fall, Lavigne co-wrote every tune, working again with Magness and the Matrix and back with Peter Zizzo and Curt Frasca. See more pictures in the History section!