A Step Forward

They jammed until pancake time, until the morning newspaper landed on the front step.

Prince was there, wielding his guitar like a blowtorch, and the dudes in Maroon 5 readily fanned the flames.

It was a rock star moment, a shoulder rub for the ego.

Last summer, Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine threw an impromptu jam session at his house with some friends and fellow musicians.

Prince showed up, and the amps just couldn't take it.

"He kind of took over, obviously, and started playing for a little bit and there was some technical problem with one of the amps or something," Levine recalls of playing with Prince. "He immediately put the guitar down and said, 'Let's go to my place, jam there. Bring your party over to my house.' So that's what we did and it was just incredible. He has this gigantic ballroom-esque place in his house and all of our friends were dancing and having a good time. And then we went up there and joined him. James (Valentine, guitars) went and traded solos with him."

"The greatest moment of my life: trading solos with Prince," Valentine says. "You learn from Prince that he has just a genuine joy and satisfaction in playing music, and that's all he wants to do. That's all he does every night."

It was a galvanizing evening for a band attempting to follow-up a multiplatinum debut with a long-simmering sophomore disc nearly five years in the making.

Maroon 5 put the airwaves in a headlock with its spit-shined rock and elastic funk, but it took a lot to make its second disc, "It Won't Be Soon Before Long," and the ghosts didn't help.

The album was tracked in Harry Houdini's infamous former home in the Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles, which is now owned by producer Rick Rubin and is allegedly haunted.

"One night when I was there alone, I saw a figure walking up the stairs when there was nobody else in the house except for my girlfriend," Valentine says. "I was so certain that I'd seen someone that I called out to this thing and then went up to the room that it had walked into. There was nobody there. I don't know how to explain it, but that's what I saw. I got the impression it was a woman and apparently other people had talked about a female spirit that they had seen."

Spirits aside, the band seems to have found its groove on "Before Long," an album of lithe, dance floor-friendly pop that shimmers like a constellation of disco balls.

It's a confindent-sounding record, slick and assured, with bigger, harder-hitting beats and a heightened emphasis on svelte soul congealing into an airtight, yet lived-in feel for the record.

"There's definitely an organic quality to our music that sometimes gets buried beneath the poppiness of it all," Levine says. "I know James is a big proponent of having it just be more live. I'm on the other end of it -- I like it to be just extremely simple and not particularly unleashed. I like it very contained for the record's sake and for radio's sake, because my goal is to make records for the radio and make live concerts for live audiences. And I think that there's a very big difference in the way you approach both of them."

That approach has evolved in the past five years, as Maroon 5 gradually has developed from a moody alt-rock band to a much flashier, more loose-limbed bunch who've become one of the faces of mainstream pop.

"We made our first record in 2002," Levine says. "We were in our early 20s and then we went through a lot with touring and growing up a little bit. Our musical tastes all kind of shifted. The band started branching out musically. And then you have to contain those things on one album, which is the hard part. But we were just experimenting with new things and new sounds and I think it's a bit more futuristic, but also a bit more retro in some ways. It seems like the right step for us to have taken."

Levine is not a man prone to much equivocation, and he has a healthy sense of self-esteem when it comes to his band. Asked about taking Swedish rockers The Hives out with them for a portion of their current tour, Levine has a simple answer.

"They're the best Swedish band," he says. "And we're the best American band."

But Levine's also mindful of not letting his ambitions get the best of him.

"Bands get big and they kind of develop these grandiose opinions of themselves and what they want to do," he says. "Then they start answering questions about impacting the culture and you think, 'All right, let's backpedal for a minute.' We craft songs and we love to play them. And we hope to inspire people and make them smile or think or dance, maybe. But we're certainly not reinventing the wheel or necessarily putting a flag anywhere.

This mind-set is a healthy one: Too many bands attempt to follow up a big-selling debut by over-thinking what got them there in the first place with awkward, forced attempts at broadening their sound.

Maroon 5 has taken a step forward with "Before Long," with bigger hooks and savvier song craft, but the appeal remains the same -- slinky pop tight as a clenched fist -- which has enabled them to eschew any sophomore slump like they do modesty.

"I think we've avoided Spin Doctors territory, we haven't just disappeared off the face of the earth," Levine says. "But at the same time, we have a lot more to prove. We're always very hard on ourselves in a productive way, in a positive way, to keep on and to establish a career.

"That's what we want," he adds. "We want to be around for a while."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0476.