PopHorror Let's Get Scared
For years, Stephen Kramer Glickman was known as Gustavo Rocque, the larger-than-life music mogul barking orders at his “dogs” on Nickelodeon’s Big Time Rush. Now, he’s trading the fictional studio for the real stage — and the results are raw, emotional and loud in the best way. That’s because Glickman is no longer playing it safe when it comes to his musical endeavors. He’s a powerhouse rocker who is having the time of his life.
And fans have noticed.
Over the summer, Glickman traveled across the U.S. with Big Time Rush (Kendall Schmidt, James Maslow, Logan Henderson and Carlos PenaVega) on their “In Real Life” tour. As the opening act, it was his job to boost the energy of the fans. With his dynamic stage presence and assortment of rock covers that he’s been recording and releasing over the past few months, including “Bad Guy” by Billie Eilish and “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan, he did exactly that. To watch Glickman command the attention of the crowd, who screamed every word back to him, it was impossible to tell that he was nervous. Not only was this his first time performing to 10,000+ people, he was unsure whether or not these rock covers — a stark contrast from the ballads heard on his 2021 release The Moving Company — would go over well.
His self-doubt was for naught, with Big Time Rush fans fully embracing this new version of Glickman — one who is leaning into the music he loves and, as Chappell would say, just having fun. PopHorror recently caught up with Glickman to discuss his journey toward finding confidence on stage, the horror influences shaping his visuals and the moments with Rushers that remind him why he’s doing this.
PopHorror: The U.S. leg of the Big Time Rush “In Real Life” tour has wrapped up. What have you been up to during this brief break before the international dates start? Are you ready for those?
Stephen Kramer Glickman: I’m sleeping and kind of dreaming of what’s coming. It’s a lot. I’ll be going with them to do all of Europe, South America, Mexico, Hawaii, Australia and Dubai. I really haven’t traveled. I’m not the most traveled fella. I’ve only been to Europe once. I did Monaco Comic Con last year and I had to get a passport so that I could go. Like, I didn’t even have a freaking passport! That was super cool. While I was there, I got lucky and got to perform in a concert where I was the opening act for the Plain White T’s. I had already booked the Big Time Rush tour when that happened. So I got to ask them questions like, what do you do on a tour?
The question that I kept asking everybody — like Joey Fatone from NSYNC, Lisa Loeb, Chris Daughtry, even the four Big Time Rush guys — was, how do you go from being the person backstage that is sitting in your dressing room to the person on stage in front of 10,000 people singing? In your brain, how do you make that make sense? Everyone was like, “You just do it.” There was very little, “Oh, you have to prep and get in the right headspace.” Everyone was like, “You’ll just find it. It’ll just happen.” It’s like a magic thing. There’s no way to put it into words.
PopHorror: When you got on stage the first night of the Big Time Rush tour, did you find that their advice — or lack thereof — was accurate?
Stephen Kramer Glickman: When I got out there for the first show, I was like, “Oh, my God, you really can’t prepare yourself enough for what that feels like.” I tried to write down the way that it made me feel every night in different ways. Sometimes I would go on stage and I’d feel like the audience was this giant monster and I was coming out with a sword to slay them, make them love me and win them all over. It was such a mind-blowing experience.
But they were all right — it’s not something that you can really prepare yourself for. You just have to get out, experience it and believe in yourself. I definitely had a lot of self-doubt and some imposter syndrome here and there. I’m not a songwriter — I’m just doing these cool covers, is that okay? I found out from the audience that it’s more than okay. I found confidence in myself. There are things in my life that I’ve wanted to accomplish, like throwing my name in the hat for the Hollywood Bowl musical, but I didn’t feel ready. Now, after doing this tour, I’m like, “I could fucking do this. I could do anything now.”
PopHorror: I love that analogy of the giant monster. Do you feel like you accomplished that?
Stephen Kramer Glickman: Everyone in the audience knows who Gustavo is. They’re all Big Time Rush fans. But some of them — or most of them — don’t know who Stephen Kramer Glickman is. So it’s an opportunity for me to go out there and give them a piece of myself that they haven’t witnessed before, that they haven’t been a part of before. To watch their faces turn from, “It’s Gustavo!,” to, “Oh, this is Stephen Glickman, I like him too!,” it’s such a fun, fascinating thing. It was such a mental freaking trip every night.
PopHorror: Did the nerves that you were feeling before the tour started dissipate pretty quickly as you performed to these massive crowds of BTR fans?
Stephen Kramer Glickman: I kept telling myself, “I can do this.” I’d get out there and be a little nervous, but I’d do the show and it’s 10,000 people. I’ve never performed for 10,000 people! I was like, “Hell, yes!” Then I’d go to the next venue and it’s 15,000 people. I’m like, “Bring it on. I can do that, no problem.” Then I’d get to the next place and it’s an arena where you’re indoors playing for 18,000 people. But I was like, “Okay, I can do this too.” I just kept telling myself that.
And what was really fun about it is that my drummer, Buddy Gibbons, guitar player, Soren Crisell, and I were all experiencing this moment for the first time. My guitar player, for sure, these are the biggest shows he’s ever done. What made it even more fun is that I would go out on stage with Big Time Rush every night and those boys knew that this was mind blowing for me, so they loved it. I would be in the middle of a song, I’d look off stage and Kendall would be sitting crisscross applesauce on the side of the stage watching me sing “Pink Pony Club,” or all four of them at one time or another. It was just so freaking sweet. It made me feel like I was a part of this magic. I love Big Time Rush; I’ve been a part of the TV show since it started. But to feel like I was part of it in a bigger way and in a different way after all these years, I just didn’t think that I would ever get to experience that.
The Biggest Crowd Pleaser
PopHorror: Well, the crowd seemed to absolutely love you. What did it mean to see people really latching onto these covers, especially “Pink Pony Club?” The whole venue was screaming that song back to you.
Stephen Kramer Glickman: It was crazy. We actually weren’t planning on doing “Pink Pony Club.” The plan was “Good Luck, Babe!” because I wanted to do a rock/metal cover and I really love that song. I had previously sung “Pink Pony Club” at the piano on tour doing university shows. Everyone would sing along and it was really fun, but I always sat at the piano and I was always by myself. But when I brought “Good Luck, Babe!” to Soren and Buddy, we performed it in the studio and were like, “Yeah, no, that’s not great. That was weird, right?” I was like, “Well, I guess we’re not going to do any Chappell Roan songs.” We were getting ready to call it a day. We thought that maybe we could try a rock version of “Pink Pony Club,” but it had been done so much.
We all walked away from it, and then Buddy and Soren — these two magical creatures — figured it out. They went in and started building what the song would sound like. I came back for rehearsal the next day and they’re like, “What do you think of this?” They played it and I was like, “This is so rad. We have to do this.” We did it to close out the first show.
@stephenkglickman PINK PONY CLUB in CHARLOTTE NC!!!!! #bigtimerush #tour
PopHorror: In your version of “Pink Pony Club,” there’s a really cool pause before the full rock vibes kick in with, “God, what have you done?” — what was the creative decision behind that?
Stephen Kramer Glickman: It actually wasn’t intentional, but it made the song what it is on the tour. We had to build tracks for the tour. We would play guitar, drums and keyboard live, but any other instruments — rhythm guitar, if we wanted a second guitar — we would have to build it into these tracks and hand those over. We didn’t have any monitors on stage, just our in-ears. So because “Pink Pony Club” starts where it’s not tracked, it’s just me at the piano, we had to hold a couple of seconds between finishing the piano part and the track kicking in.
And because we had to hold, it broke the rhythm of the song. The entire audience is singing along with us to the opening of the song and then when they would all sing, “God, what have you done?,” in rhythm the way that Chappell Roan does it, our band hasn’t kicked in to do it. So then they’re all surprised and then they all have to wait for me to do it. By doing that, it breaks everyone’s concentration and then they would all have to pay attention to what we were doing. It just made the song our version instead of something like “Mr. Brightside,” which is almost an exact recreation of The Killers’ cover.
Just because of technicalities, we ended up getting to create a version of “Pink Pony Club” that has gone on to get not millions of plays on TikTok, but billions of plays. We are in the 2 to 3 billion range of plays right now on TikTok and it became a TikTok trend. We got to make T-shirts that say, “I hope he plays ‘Pink Pony Club,'” and that was crazy.
PopHorror: Do these Chappell songs have personal meaning to you?
Stephen Kramer Glickman: I’m a huge Chappell Roan fan and a big supporter of the LGBTQ+ community. “Pink Pony Club,” it’s really about West Hollywood and the scene of Santa Monica Blvd. and all of the LGBTQ+ clubs. For a year and a half, I was the opening act for the Dream Girls drag queen show [read our interview with horror queen Lydia B Kollins here] at a place called Rage on Santa Monica Blvd. Rage has since been shut down and reopened by Lance Bass from NSYNC, who’s a friend, and I got to go and hang out with him at the opening of it.
So when this song came out, when I heard it for the first time, it brought me right back to that time period where I was struggling to pay my rent, just struggling in this town. I had no career yet. I was working at the Comedy Store during the day as a phone operator and at night, I was working as a bouncer at the club. I was there for years as a bouncer until I got cast in Shrek the Musical on Broadway, and then that changed my career again. That song holds such a beautiful place in my heart and performing it around the country was super rad.
PopHorror: You mentioned that Soren and Buddy were instrumental in making your cover of “Pink Pony Club” so unique. Were they involved in your other recent covers?
Stephen Kramer Glickman: The orchestrations and arrangement of that song, “Bad Guy” — which I think is one of the coolest things I’ve ever gotten to perform on stage — and “Toxic” were by Soren and Buddy. They put those together. They’re amazing and I owe them enormously. I love singing those songs. They’re so fun and weird. “Toxic” kind of feels like a Tim Burton cover, like something right out of The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s the kookiest version. And “Bad Guy” literally just feels like it belongs in a Robert Rodriguez movie. It’s very acid rock; it’s so neat.
And “Paralyzed,” which we don’t perform on the tour but Big Time Rush does, was all Soren. He made that entire song from top to bottom. At 25 years old, that boy just crushes it. When I heard it for the first time, I was like, “Oh, my God, this is so freaking cool.” I hoped the Big Time Rush guys would like it and thank God they did.
Embracing His Rockin’ Side
PopHorror: Tell me how you started doing these rock/emo covers. You came out with the album The Moving Company, which was primarily ballads, in 2021. Your cover of Big Time Rush’s “Paralyzed” really marked your first dive into this heavier territory. What inspired that?
Stephen Kramer Glickman: I’ll be super real with you — when I made The Moving Company, I made it as a way of getting over my ex-girlfriend. I was heartbroken and in a really bad emotional headspace. I was encouraged by my sister to just record music and try to make something that would help me through this period in my life. That album was cool, but it wasn’t for everybody. I was really just making it for myself and so that I could have something to prove to people that I could sing. When my mom listened to it, she was like, “It’s a beautiful album. It’s very depressing though. Very sad.”
Then as I started to feel better in my life, I started experimenting with other types of music that I like to sing and love to perform. I did some Broadway concert stuff and even had this idea to do “Montero,” the Lil Nas X song, but as a country western song. But it was doing “Paralyzed” where this part of myself got to play, the part that has only played when I’ve been by myself alone in my car singing along to Guns N’ Roses or AC/DC. I don’t play guitar, so I was always like, “How can you be rock?” I’d always limit myself. But then once I started working with Soren and Buddy, and I had this guitar player and drummer, suddenly it could be, “Oh, I don’t have to play the piano. I can just sing the song.”
And I love My Chemical Romance. There’s a lot of emo rock bands that I’m a big fan of. Once I started working with Soren and Buddy, I was like, “Wait a second. We could do an emo cover of a Big Time Rush song.” It just seemed crazy and fun.
Spooky Influences
PopHorror: A lot of the imagery for these covers, from the album artwork to the music videos, has nods to horror. Was this intentional? Are you a horror fan?
Stephen Kramer Glickman: I love spooky things and horror movies. When we did the music video for “When the Party’s Over,” the Billie Eilish song, I went to the folks at the Hard Rock Cafe in Hollywood and told them I wanted to shoot it there when no one was around. I told them I wanted to put balloons and it would be focused on me at the end of a party. I said, “I’ll sing the song and, halfway through, I’m gonna reach to the back of my head and pull my face off. I’ll just be muscle and bone underneath, and I’ll be holding the skin in my hand.” It was such a creepy, fun idea. The Hard Rock Cafe was like, “Yep, sounds great. Come on down.” So our whole team went down there and shot this thing. I brought in an amazing makeup artist and we did some trick photography. I literally pulled my face off in front of everyone who works at Hard Rock and they were sitting there like, “What is happening right now?”
When it came time to do the music video for “Paralyzed,” we had the idea of the Babadook. I would be the Babadook and I’d be floating in the room. We’d do shots that look really scary, like having me pressed up against the ceiling while someone’s sleeping. Then we had the idea to start the video with Booboo Stewart from Twilight, who’s a good friend, who would lip sync my singing for the opening so everyone would think it’s him singing the beginning of the song.
Then I was like, “We’re going to do a party. A goth party. The Babadook and his band of ghouls are performing.” We again hired a great makeup artist to come in and we worked with Rubies, a Halloween costume company that wardrobed everybody. We didn’t have a budget to hire a hundred extras, so we reached out to the goth community of Los Angeles and were like, “We’re having a party with free drinks, free food, free music and booze. We’ll check IDs and then for one hour out of that entire evening of dancing and music, you have to be in a music video. That’s the rules if you’re going to show up. And you have to dress in your craziest goth attire.” So we ended up with the best dressed extras of all time and the coolest looking people.
Musically, “Paralyzed” put me in a much more rock space, where I have a lot more fun performing than I did before because, also, I’m not super depressed. By adding that rock element, instead of it being sad music, it’s like you’re fighting against the sadness with the rock music.
PopHorror: Looking ahead, are there any other rock covers that you’re hoping to record/perform?
Stephen Kramer Glickman: There’s some collabs that are fucking crazy. We’re working on a My Chemical Romance cover that is so cool. We’re working on a cover of a song by The Weeknd, some Queen, some other stuff that I don’t know if it’ll be our thing or if it won’t, but we’re playing around with Peter Gabriel, U2 and some other songs like that. We’ve only had one or two rehearsals back since the last tour and they were both truly magical. It’s so amazing working with Buddy and Soren. They’re so talented and I would never be able to do this kind of stuff without them. They bring so many flavors into the mix.
These guys play intro music for me when I come out onto the stage, when I walk out, the audience starts screaming and I wave at everybody before we start our first song. For the first half of the tour, they played AC/DC “Back in Black”…at a Big Time Rush concert! About halfway through the tour, Buddy was like, “What are you listening to, Stephen?” I was like, “Oh, just Rage Against the Machine to get me excited and ramped up to get out on the stage.” When I came out that night, he and Soren surprised me by playing Rage Against the Machine. I almost crapped my pants. I was like, “What is happening right now?” It was the coolest, funniest thing because I know that audience is all there because they’re Big Time Rush fans and they grew up on a Nickelodeon TV show, and suddenly it’s just “Bulls on Parade.” It really psyched me up and got me in the headspace to have fun with the music I love and not take it so seriously.
Drawing Inspo From The Greats
PopHorror: You have such a dynamic presence on stage. It’s impossible to know that you had any nerves beforehand. Did you draw inspiration from any of your favorite rock bands, all of whom exude such confidence when performing?
Stephen Kramer Glickman: When we started the tour, I went out on stage with the headspace of being very grateful that I’m getting a chance to perform for these people. I was like, “Let’s give them a wonderful experience.” But within about five shows, it went from that to, “Let’s get out there and burn this place to the ground!” I found that part of myself. One of the venues we were at, Megadeth had just done a show. I was like, “How would Megadeth prepare to go on stage? How would GWAR prepare?” I got into the headspace of what Black Sabbath would have thought about before they walked out on stage instead of being like, “Okay, here we go, let’s have fun.”
I started really leaning on those rock icons of what they think about and how they would act going out, and it got me in the right headspace to be like, “Let’s get out there and literally set fire to this building!” I wanted to set it up so that when Big Time Rush came out later, that audience was primed for them. I wanted them to be at a 10 when BTR came on stage. That was the goal — to get the energy loud and everyone psyched up. It definitely was way more fun that way.
Gotta Live It Big Time
PopHorror: I’m sure that wasn’t a difficult feat — they have such a diehard fanbase! Something I love is that you and the guys of BTR are still embracing your fame from the show, despite it being off the air for a decade. Can you speak to that and what it means to still have fans loving BTR and Gustavo?
Stephen Kramer Glickman: It was like someone flipped a switch when Big Time Rush went on Netflix in 2021. They had it on streaming for a year or two and it was in the top 10 shows. It literally lit up the original fan base, who are now working with jobs and careers, and then it also created an entire new fan base of young people that were in high school watching it on Netflix during the pandemic. So you have these two audiences and, I’m not kidding you, everywhere I go, every single day, wherever I am, someone goes, “Hey, Gustavo! You’re my childhood.”
But they’re the most respectful fan base in the world. They’ll wait until I finish dinner or, if I’m on a date or something at a restaurant, they’ll wait until my date gets up to go to the bathroom before saying something. They are the nicest fan base. I’m so lucky to have them. And I try extremely hard not to disappoint them. I’m a no drinking and driving guy for life. I try to keep all of my ducks in a row always so that I don’t ruin their childhood like so many other people have. I just always want to make them proud because I’m proud of them. These are people that were kids that are now adults. They’ve followed me to other parts of my career and supported other things that I’ve done, animated projects, movies, social media.
I never get to see them in a mass. It’s only something like going through TSA and the guy is like, “Okay, part your legs, Gustavo. You’re good to go.” Or, I went to an ear, nose and throat doctor. The guy puts the camera down my throat and as he’s doing it, he goes, “Rusher for life.” He was this adult man with a beard! You see them one at a time and it’s not the same as this, where you get to see all of them. And some of them are wearing T-shirts with my face on it, which is hilarious. I really thought it would take me getting cast as a series regular on another television show that was huge for that whole audience to find me again. Instead, I get to sing “Bad Guy” in front of them, which is super weird and cool.
PopHorror: Did you remain close with the BTR guys even after the show ended?
Stephen Kramer Glickman: I’m extremely lucky that those four guys and I have all remained very close friends this whole time, all of these 10 years or whatever since we finished the show. Kendall and I recorded “How to Save a Life” by The Fray and put that out after my friend took his own life. I told him that I was really upset and he was like, “Hey, why don’t we do a song to commemorate it?” We put it out and it helped me get through it, and I love Kendall for that. Logan is the homie forever. We’re like the closest buddies. He would come out to my stand-up shows all the time and was on my podcast a bunch.
James I’ve known since he was 12. His dad and my mom are friends, which is so random, from back in the day in San Diego. So getting to see him as not a kid, but as an adult man, it’s like, God, people lose their fucking minds over him in the audience. He walks out and people just start screaming and crying, and that’s really a neat thing. We’re both Jewish, so sometimes we’ll say something on stage about how we knew each other from Jewish school or the synagogue, and people go nuts. They just lose it.
And then Carlos…one time on the tour, I had met a woman through the internet and she happened to be coming to the show. Her and I shared a kiss early in after my set. I ran into Carlos and I go, “I just kissed a girl! She’s so beautiful and nice.” He was like, “Oh, great job, man!” Then I get out on stage with Big Time Rush to do our set and Carlos turns to the audience like, “Hey, Stephen, is there a special lady tonight in the audience you want to dedicate a song to?” I was like, “I’m going to kill you.” He’s such an extremely funny guy and his kids are the cutest little cutie pies in the whole world. They were with us the entire tour. They were like, “Uncle Stavo! What color suit are you wearing tonight?” He and his wife are incredible. They all are.
@bigtimerush Counting down the days until we get to sing this to @Stephen Kramer Glickman again 😂 #btr #bigtimerush #btrworldwidetour
Thanks for speaking with us, Stephen! Catch him on the European leg of the Big Time Rush “In Real Life” tour, kicking off Nov. 14 in Vienna, Austria.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
