Nickelback |
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Thu. October 09.2003 3:44 PM EDT |
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Nickelback: Sunny Side UpIt's not all rage on the band's new record. The growling Canadians sing about partying night to night, and talk about how having a hit is a great sexual experience. by Dana Feher and C. Bottomley |
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Nickelback (Publicity) |
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The expectations could crush a weaker man than Chad Kroeger. Nickelback’s new The Long Road follows in the wake of Silver Side Up, a record that sold 9 million copies on the strength of the melancholy rocker “How You Remind Me.” Between
For starts, Nickelback kept their cool. The band says making The Long Road was downright painless. Indeed, the Roadrunner label trusted Kroeger, guitarist Ryan Peake, drummer Ryan Vikedal and Chad’s bass-playing brother Mike so much, they left the Vancouver group to their own devices. Going with their guts, the band resisted formula. This hard-rocking disc finds them at their heaviest. Success has also made Nickelback wary of overdoing the grunge-pop angst. Sure, the gravelly single “Someday” is a melodramatic apology to Kroeger’s girlfriend, but anthems like “Throw Yourself Away” - inspired by a teen who gave birth at the prom and left her baby in a dumpster - are capped with the joyful “See You at the Show.” Chad says the latter song recounts the triumphant Silver Side Up tour, with “everyone jumping on the bus, having a big party every single night, and hoping this rollercoaster ride never ends.” It’s likely to continue for a while yet: The Long Road sold 200,000 copies in its first week. The band nurse ambitions to stick around as long as the Rolling Stones, but one thing might stop them: the press. Fried from talking to European media, Nickelback let themselves get a little goofy as they tackled VH1’s questions about road life, their good fortune and, doing the hit dance. VH1: When the tour for Silver Side Up finished, was it hard for you to adjust to life back home? Chad Kroeger: There’s always this bizarre adjusting period. You buy a generator and set it up next to your bed, to accurately mimic the sound of your tour bus. Mike Kroeger: It’s a little harder to make the diesel smoke properly. CK: The last time we got off the road, I crawled into bed. I was like, “Okay, I know I’m exhausted. It’s time for night-night.” I laid there and my eyes were just [open]. I got up. I walked around. I went back to bed and I was like, “What is going on?” It was strange. MK:[jokingly] You were sober! That was the problem. [Watch Clip] VH1: During the tour you turned from a mildly successful act to a multi-platinum-selling band. What was that like? CK: It got to the point where every single day somebody was coming up with this new piece of information. “Oh, you just went platinum in the UK!” “Oh, you just went double platinum in Australia!” As cool as it was to hear that everyday when we’d go to eat, you don’t pay attention to it. MK: Sometimes you just want to eat. Ryan Peake: We actually thought, we’re finally gonna get our full rider! [Laughs.] People are actually going to read our contract and give us exactly what we want, instead of kinda what we want! Ryan Vikedal: “Hey guys, I think we’re gonna get the white socks and the white shirts now!” CK: “Can we get all the beer this time?” [Watch Clip] VH1: How has your life changed since Silver Side Up came out? CK: Every time anyone asks us that question, they wanna [hear], “Well, we went out and bought big houses and bought lots of cars.” Everyone wants a mini-episode of Cribs. All they want to know is how many zeros are in the bank account. [Laughs.] That’s what you’re wondering, aren’t you? VH1: OK, how many zeros do you have in the bank account? CK: Enough that my lawyer says to me, you don’t have to lift anything heavy again so long as you live! That’s a nice feeling. VH1: But there’s a feeling that you’ve really arrived? All that you worked for is in place? CK: You never get to that point where you’re like, “Okay, we’re here!” You’re always looking at people who are more successful and have been around longer. [You think] Look at how long the Stones have been around! Let’s try and be around for half as long. Wouldn’t that be an amazing feeling? MK: There are nice things that you get to see, like when the kids are lined up in the snowy cold weather for four hours just to get in to a concert. You’re sitting there thinking, “Wow, these people are all making a really cool sacrifice to come and see us play a rock show. It’s cool that they think it’s that important.” VH1: Did you write a lot of The Long Road while you were on tour? CK: We did a bunch of writing on the road. We knew that we wanted to have several songs on the new record that were more aggressive than the last album. I think we’re getting heavier and heavier on our albums even though we’re known for ballads! [Laughs.] VH1: You produced this album yourself. Why? CK: We really procrastinated our way into producing this record ourselves. It’s so funny when we listen to people say, “So you guys produced this one yourselves!” MK: We sound like real go-getters. It’s sort of the opposite. CK: Truthfully, we had so many producers in mind to do this. We just never got around to calling them! The label was enjoying everything that we sent them. There was no [one saying], “Yeah, you guys need a little more direction.” They were just like, “This sounds good. Keep going guys!” MK: We fooled them early. CK: I guess we just magically found ourselves with the keys to the condo and the parents were gone! VH1: Why did you title the album The Long Road? RV: We had David Edwards, an artist from Vancouver, come up with the artwork for the album. From there, we discovered the title. The best way to describe it is that Silver Side Up was the album that merged us onto the bridge. Now we’re just seeing how far we can go with it. MK: We worked on that answer for four hours last night. CK: [in disbelief] “Merged us onto the bridge”? That was great! Thank God that f*cking camera’s rolling! [Laughs.] MK: It’s all about merging! [Laughs.] VH1: What inspired the first single “Someday”? CK: I found myself making promises I knew I wasn’t going to keep. Like, “Don’t worry, someday, sweetheart, we’ll have time to go to Mexico, just the two of us.” Or, “I promise, someday there will be no interviews, no TV cameras, no Nickelback, no nothing. Just you and I.” [The word] “someday” comes out of your mouth all the time, and it almost never happens. It’s my way of apologizing. Sorry, sweetheart. VH1: When you write a song like “Someday” or “How You Remind Me” do you think, “now that’s a hit!” CK: Ryan says it’s a hit. RP: I call all of our hits, and see the future … RV: He has this special hit dance. MK: Sometimes he makes it rain. RP: I get them confused sometimes. CK: [Laughs.] “Not the rain dance, we want the hit dance!” MK: We’re like the last ones to go, “Okay, it might be a hit.” If it goes to No. 1 or something good like that, then that’s the time when you can sort of agree with everyone saying, “That’s a hit!” But otherwise you’ve got to be humble about it and just sort of watch it develop before you decide. VH1: How do you feel when it does become a hit? CK: It’s like having the best sexual experience of your life. It’s like nine on the Richter scale. When a song that you write takes on this whole new life and people all over the world learn the words and sing along, it’s an incredible feeling. We’re dying to see which of the songs people are going to sing along to the loudest. That’s their way of casting their vote. So we’re going to have to start chucking in almost the whole new album in order to find out what’s really going to latch on. VH1: Do you prefer the road to the studio? CK: That’s a tough one. We make our records in Vancouver, so while we’re at the studio, we get to be at home. You’re sleeping in your own bed. The boys get to be with their families. MK: That’s hard, because when you do a good take in the studio, 20,000 people don’t jump to their feet and scream, "Yes!" CK: Speak for yourself. In my mind, it’s a little different. MK: Lead singer. CK: I’m kidding! What a f*cking dick! [Laughs.] [Watch Clip] VH1: Chad, you had a big hit with “Hero.” Will you and the band continue to have outside projects? CK: Right now, I think we’ve had our fill. Now it’s time to concentrate on Nickelback. We’re a little busy. Those things are much more fun to do towards the end of an album cycle, when you’ve got a little downtime and you can focus and there aren’t huge tours coming up. It’s nice to come back to the baby and go, “I miss you!” VH1: In one word, what is life like right now for Nickelback? RV: Busy. RP: Bubbly. Life for Nickelback is busy now. It’s really busy now. It’s what we have to do. CK: “Sing! Don’t sing! Sing! Don’t sing! Shut up!” RP: The dance part we’re really crappy at, but it’s good. VH1: Where do you see Nickelback in the future? RP: Nickelback hopefully will be around for a while. Typically, we don’t look much further than three o’clock today. We’re always asking, “What are we doing in an hour? What time are we onstage tonight?” CK: We don’t even take it a day at a time, we take it an hour at a time. RP: When we started this, we didn’t say we were going for world domination and infiltrate every country out there. But things have been working out that way. That’s where we’re going to keep things. Nickelback’s very goal-oriented. MK: Can we get more cheese on that? |
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