"I was a military brat and I moved around the world with my family, and so I saw A New Hope in Japan on a military base," Harmer recalls. "We went in and saw the movie and afterwards when we came out there were tables and tables of Star Wars toys and merchandise. They were selling them like crazy and there was this big melee. Kids were screaming and everyone wanted Han Solo. That frenzy around it was so exciting and I ended up with my first two action figures: Han Solo and R2-D2. But I wanted the Millennium Falcon for what seemed like forever."
To this day, Harmer is still collecting random toys and comics as an adult. "I wouldn't necessarily classify myself as a rabid collector," Harmer clarifies. "I'm not absolutely concerned with having the third variant of a toy that had a different paint scheme, but I have a pretty extensive toy and comic collection. I always look at those kinds of things as a physical representation of your personality. If you were to look at somebody's toy shelf, you don't look at each individual toy; you take it in its total. And that has a lot to do with what makes that person tick, what they think and their sense of humor."
In Harmer's self-described "cabinet of curiosities" it's the old, worn-out action figures that he counts as his pride and joy items above the rest. "I still have some of my old Star Wars toys as kid on my shelf," Harmer says. "I have an old Boba Fett that is just solid gray because the paint is worn off of him. And I have a Darth Vader that's long lost his wrist sword and he looks rather naked without it. And all the toys are floppy because the joints are loose. So I think my older toys like that are my favorite just because there's so much sentimental value. I'm drawn to toys that look like they've been well-played with and loved, they seem like they have so much more life in them. You can look at those toys and see all the adventures they've been on."
As the bassist in one of the hottest indie bands currently on the charts, Harmer has had his own share of adventures. He joined Death Cab for Cutie (whose name comes from a song performed by British rock comedy group the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band in The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour movie) in 1997 while attending college in Bellingham, Washington. Started as a solo project by his friend singer/guitarist Ben Gibbard, Harmer was recruited for the band along with producer Chris Walla. The end result of their collaborative efforts was their low-fi debut, You Can Play These Songs With Chords (later released in 2002 as a rarities CD). They were soon joined by drummer Nathan Good, and in 1998, Death Cab for Cutie released their debut full-length LP on Barsuk records, Something About Airplanes. The release created substantial buzz in the Seattle indie music circuit and the band not only seemed to tour non-stop, but continued to release a steady flow of critically-successful records including We Have the Facts And We're Voting Yes (2000) and The Photo Album (2001).
The band took a brief break and worked on outside projects which included Walla producing records for such bands as The Decemberists, The Thermals, Nada Surf, and Travis Morrison, while Gibbard released Give Up from his other band, The Postal Service. In 2003, with new drummer Jason McGerr, Death Cab for Cutie released Transatlanticism. The record's stellar sales, positive press, and of course the band's presence on the hit teen TV drama "The O.C." got the attention of Atlantic Records, and in 2005 the band released their latest record, Plans, on the major label.
That same year, Harmer found himself living out a childhood dream by seeing a preview screening of Revenge of the Sith at Skywalker Ranch sitting next to the master himself. "I sat in the same row with George Lucas and his daughter Katie and I was quivering like a leaf the entire time because not only was so excited just to see the movie, but George was there too," Harmer says. "When we got the invitation I had no idea about anything that was going to be down there, I just thought it would be all reporters and we'd be shuffled into a room and we'd get to see the movie. And that would be exciting enough because I'd get to see it well before any of my friends and I could have that over them. But then I went there, and George Lucas was there in the theater watching the movie with all of us."
Harmer was completely awestruck by Lucas' presence at the event. "I mean when you meet the maker, he's too bright and you can't look directly at him or you'll go blind," Harmer laughs. "I didn't actually meet him the first time I saw him. I was standing in line for a drink and there was a whole group a people who sort of surround George when he came out to say hi. They handed him a marker and he was grabbing people's laminated passes and signing them for their kids and fans. I was trying not to pay attention to what was going on, and he came right by and grabbed my pass and signed it for me. And I didn't have to do the awkward, 'Can I get your autograph?' thing, which was great."
Once they sat down and watched the film, Harmer says he was completely drawn in by the characters and their struggles to deal with the murkiness between right and wrong.
"The massacre of the children was amazing," Harmer says. "Darth Vader coming back and taking out all the young Jedi was unbelievable. I was so shocked! And just the horrific image of Vader on the shore of the Mustafar lava river, legless and burnt -- there was something extraordinarily powerful about that scene. Why I picked the two darkest moments of the movie to say were my favorites out of the gate, I'm not quite sure."
