The Rescues on Making Music for Vampires with Broadway’s The Lost Boys

The Rescues never intended to become Broadway composers. In fact, the Los Angeles indie rockers didn’t even mean to become a band. And yet something like fate brought them together.

“We were forced together 15, 20 years ago and it turned out to be the greatest gift of our lives,” Adrianne Gonzalez (also known as AG) says as her bandmates, Gabriel Mann and Kyler England, nod in agreement.

Shortly after meeting, the trio released a self-titled EP in 2008, followed quickly by their debut full-length album, Crazy Ever After, before year’s end. Since then, they’ve added three more albums to their resume, as well as can’t-miss needle drops in popular TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy, One Tree Hill, Pretty Little Liars and Station 19.

Along the way, The Rescues built up a devoted community of fans—one of whom happened to be two-time Tony winner Michael Arden.

“I fully stalked them,” the visionary director confesses to Ticketmaster. “I went to all their shows at Hotel Cafe in California and all the venues they played in, I knew their albums by heart and dreamed of working with them one day.”

So when it came time for his latest project—a Broadway adaptation of the 1987 teen vampire flick The Lost Boys—Arden knew exactly who he wanted to craft the sound of a sunny Southern California town overrun by bloodsucking teenagers.

Based on the cult classic starring ‘80s icons like Kiefer Sutherland, Corey Feldman and Corey Haim, the new musical follows teenager Michael (LJ Benet), his mother Lucy (Shoshana Bean) and younger brother Sam (Benjamin Pajak) as they move to the fictional town of Santa Clara, California and Michael falls in with a gang of vampires led by the magnetic David (Ali Louis Bourzgui).

At a special preview presentation in late January, reporters braved New York City’s record-breaking cold for a first taste of The Lost Boys ahead of the show raising its curtain at the Palace Theatre starting March 27. Inside the rehearsal room, the cast—which also includes Maria Wirries, Paul Alexander Nolan, Jennifer Duka and Miguel Gil—performed two songs from key points in the show: The electric “Lose Yourself / Have To Have You” and benedictory Act II closer “If We Make It Through the Night.”

“I haven’t heard a score like this since RENT,” Arden tells Ticketmaster of his favorite band’s turn on Broadway, before adding, “I think we have found a huge new voice in the American musical theater with these three.”

On the heels of Arden’s praise, The Rescues sat down exclusively with Ticketmaster to chat about making their debut as Broadway composers, creating a musical homage to the movie’s 1980s roots with the musical’s score and why their native California is the perfect hiding place for a vampire gang.

Michael Arden was just raving to me about your music and how excited he was to get you on board for The Lost Boys. But from your perspective, how did you get involved in this project?

Gabriel Mann: So Arden was cast in a jukebox musical version of our major label record [Let Loose The Horses (2010)]. About 10 years ago, there was a reading somewhere around here.

Kyler England: There’s a reason you haven’t heard of it.

Adrianne Gonzalez: [Laughs]

GM: So cut to 10 years later: the producers asked him to direct this show, and he had been keeping track of us. And he was like, “This is the band that should do it.” I’ve seen him do this in other departments: cast choreographers, everything, where he finds the right person and he puts them in his back pocket till the right time. And we are the fortunate beneficiaries of that.

Was writing for Broadway ever on your bucket list before he approached you for The Lost Boys?

All: No!

OK! That’s unanimous.

AG: But also, being in a band was never on our radar or bucket list. We were forced together 15, 20 years ago and it turned out to be the greatest gift of our lives. We’re best friends. We’re literally… well, not literally, but we’re metaphorically family. And this was the second iteration of that exact same thing. Sometimes you don’t know the thing you need until it falls from the sky.

Were you fans of the original movie?

KE: Oh yeah! We’re ’80s kids. So we saw it originally when it came out. We probably were too young, we probably should not have been seeing it.

GM: I never saw it!

KE: You didn’t?

GM: I didn’t know anything about it. I knew the image of Kiefer Sutherland with white hair. I had never seen it, and then we all sort of did a deep dive into it after. But, like, Adri said yes before we…

AG: Isn’t that just my whole vibe? I say yes before they do, and then they’re like, “Well, I guess we’re doing it.”

GM: Adri’s, like, on the train before it leaves the station.

AG: I’m just… I know, I know.

KE: You had me at vampires.

How did you approach crafting the sound of the show?

AG: There are some elements, sonically, that we already sort of did—like, there are a few songs that we did new versions of, or took little pieces of our own songs [and] put them into the show. We wanted to create a world that was new, but that brought in the ’80s elements and was a real homage. Both in the songwriting and also in the orchestration—Gabe and I co-orchestrated it. And then also, bringing in the more timeless vibe that is what our band is. You know?

GM: I think that’s all exactly right. Also, as a band we have varied tastes, and that’s useful in a show because there’s a lot of characters and they all have a different thing going on. I think of the three of us as sort of a funnel through which these different characters’ voices have to go through. So that thread exists, but at the same time, there’s a big variety of… the way that the melodies are structured and the rhythms of songs are different for different characters and different points in the story.

KE: One of the joys of having a big cast—you know, there are a lot of characters— is that we can explore different sounds with each one. And it also has been a challenge figuring out how to balance out that material and make sure everybody gets enough so that we understand where each character is coming from. But that was definitely super fun to play with.

You’re an L.A. band and this story is famously set in the fictional town of Santa Carla. How did your California roots inform the music in the show?

KE: California has this really unique balance of, like, sunny hope and optimism. And certain parts of California—L.A. included and Santa Cruz, where Santa Carla’s based on—there’s like this undercurrent of darkness? This push and pull between the two.

AG: They’re seedy. L.A.’s got a seedy thing.

KE: Yeah! But it’s where, like, hope and optimism turns into cult-like worship. California has a lot of weird, colliding [juxtapositions]. I mean, we love California. But yeah, it’s a good place for vampires.

Back in January 2025, you released a live performance of “Belong to Someone,” which was the first taste of the music from The Lost Boys. What can you tell me about that song?

AG: So, when the producers came to us and asked us to do the show, we sort of auditioned with three songs. Two of them are still in the show; one of them’s “Belong to Someone.” That was the second song we wrote for the show, and then “My Brother’s a Vampire” is the other one. But yeah, that was a song that, I don’t know, we were like, “Let’s write an ‘I Want’ song. What does that look like?” That was our first time writing an ‘I Want’ song.

GM: When you start exploring these characters, you have to think about where they started and where they’re going, and how they get there and why. So what is Michael all about? And why does he end up joining this group of guys who he probably shouldn’t have joined? What drew him to that and what made him go there?

KE: Mm-hmm, what made him susceptible? We wanted to get under the hood of an 18-year-old boy. Like, what’s that angst you feel when you’re a teenager? I’ve never been an 18-year-old boy, but I was an 18-year-old girl. And that wanting to be a part of something, wanting to kind of literally lose yourself in another person or people—not just romantically, but with people you belong with—so that you can find yourself through belonging to other people. We really enjoyed digging into where Michael could be coming from. ‘Cause not just any person is gonna fall into a vampire gang, right?

As a band, you’re also really known for your harmonies, which are just unbelievable…

AG: Thank you! It’s total nerd alert. Like, every time. Nerd alert, it’s bad! But [we] can’t help it.

GM: I think that we push ourselves to not make [our harmonies] the most obvious thing. And so that is something that you’ll hear in this show, also.

AG: It’s a lot of sus, a lot of sus chords.

GM: You’re gonna have to examine it if you want to sing along. When you’re a singer nerd like we are, there’s a lot there for [listeners] to explore in terms of how the harmonies work together and how the chords work together. We’re not just doing straight thirds most of the time. There are certain sounds that we’re collectively allergic to, and so I think you hear that [in The Lost Boys‘ score]. And it’s exciting for us to see the cast explore that and do it. It’s really cool.

The vampire rock band fronted by Ali Louis Bourzgui’s character, David, plays a major factor in a lot of the music happening onstage. Was there a difference for you when it came to writing music for the band compared to everything else in the show?

KE: Yeah! The band is the edgy, dark part of the show, right? Which was really fun to get to do because we also get to explore the romance and the comedy. But they bring all the edge and all the sexiness. We don’t really write sexy songs as The Rescues. So writing “Have to Have You,” it took us a sec to get going. That sounds really wrong…

AG: Leave it to Kyler, I swear to god she always—[Laughs]

GM: There’s also, like, when you’re talking about “Brother,” [that’s] another song that the band plays and it’s a very different song from “Have to Have You.” So, like, bands, as we know, have different sides to them. So there’s a different side to The Lost Boys band that you will hear in the show. You know, they’re not one thing. They are surprising.

What is another song from The Lost Boys that you can’t wait for audiences to hear?

AG: Are we allowed to say the names of the songs? Does that matter? Nobody cares, it’s fine, right?

GM: I have many answers to that. But one answer is “My Brother is a Vampire.” There’s just a way that that song begins that I think people are going to be very surprised by. Literally after the first—

KE: —Don’t give it away!

AG: God, Jesus, don’t! Cut it, girl, cut it.

[All three laugh]

AG: “If We Make It Through the Night” is definitely one, and you guys got to hear that today. I’m so excited for that one, big time. That might be my number one.

KE: I agree. And then I’ll add to that, we have a song about brotherhood, which is also one of the big themes of the show. It’s really beautiful to explore the relationships between men—the friendships, the love. It’s something we don’t have enough of in our culture, I think. So [we] loved writing that.

GM: I would say one other thing… a Broadway show is not about a song. A Broadway show is from beginning to end and that experience of being in that room, at that moment, and having it all happen. So to extract one song is really hard.

I feel like this is something that I learned when I saw Come From Away. I saw that show and I was like, “This show has to be experienced in this theater.” And it’s incredibly powerful. Trying to describe it to someone, or pick a song from it, it’s almost like it does a disservice to the show. Which is not to say we have this amazing thing, I’m just saying that it’s interesting how the songs work together. So when you hear “If We Make It Through the Night” in this room, you’re missing all of the context. It’s so much more powerful when you hear it with that context. So I guess that’s my point.

Tickets for The Lost Boys are available on Ticketmaster.