nickelBack
www.undercover.com.au
According
to their own history, Canada's Nickelback started as follows …"Whether
its the state you're in or your state of mind... Nickelback take you from there,
to a whole different place. The sound is a maelstrom of energy, drawing on
classic and contemporary influences that bring to mind everything from Led
Zeppelin to Creed. Then there's the name - what's that about? "The truth?"
asks bassist Mike Kroeger, "We couldn't decide what to call ourselves and
after recording our first songs, we still didn't have a name. I was working as a
cashier at Starbucks Coffee and let's just say... coffee was $1.45."
The
Starbucks was Vancouver back in 1996. The brothers Kroeger, lead singer/guitarist
Chad and bassist Mike, first started what was to become Nickelback along with
their cousin Brandon on drums and longtime friend Ryan Peake handling guitar
duties. Chad wrote the lyrics, while all four members collaborated on the music.
Their first two outings, a seven song demo Hesher (a title derived from slurring
the phrase "Hey, sure") and their full-length debut Curb, were well
received in Canada and the band toured ceaselessly to support them. Nickelback
later burned through six sticksmen, finally clicking with Ryan Vikedal, an old
friend of Peake's." They have now conquered the planet with their second
album Silver Side Up. In Australia to talk about it, Chad Kroeger and Ryan 'Nik'
Vikedal dropped by Undercover.
PAUL
CASHMERE: Mike and Nik from Nickelback, welcome to Australia! Nik, they didn't
name the band after you did they?
NICKELBACK:
No, we named him after the band!
PAUL
CASHMERE: Two albums in eighteen months, you Canadians are fast workers aren't
you?
NICKELBACK:
Well, they just got released eighteen months apart. We did them about three
years apart. So, they were done far apart but released over here in very short
order.
PAUL
CASHMERE: Well, when we think about the second album, a lot of songs for the
second album were actually written and finished off before the first one came
out? You had the chance to go on the road and play both albums live?
NICKELBACK:
Yeah, absolutely!
PAUL
CASHMERE: So, a band that gets to road test to, I guess, around two or three
hundred gigs before the album comes out, you'd have to be fairly confident about
the songs before going into the studio?
NICKELBACK:
You pretty much know if they're gonna work or not.
PAUL
CASHMERE: I tend to find a lot of bands evolve their songs because they don't do
a lot of road testing. A lot of bands are very precious about playing songs live
because of the threat of things getting out on the internet or whatever. Are you
guys worried about that? Playing songs way before they come out?
NICKELBACK:
No, not at all. It actually works the opposite way. It hypes it up because if
people hear the song they just can't wait to get their hands on a recording of
it. If they like it live, chances are they're going to prefer the recording of
it so it just hypes it up for the new record. When Napster was still working,
there were 100's of versions of the previously unrecorded material. Just loads
of them. I don't know how many, we just had about three hundred different tracks
on Napster most of them live but then Napster got shut down about a week before
the record was released so that worked out nicely for us.
PAUL
CASHMERE: Watching you guys live last night, it's definitely evident that this
is a band that has cut its teeth live. I guess you're very similar to a lot of
Australian bands because you've done so many live gigs and moulded your songs
that way. What about touring? Do you get to learn a lot from each other while
you're on the road? That works well when you get into the studio environment?
NICKELBACK:
Definitely! I think just spending the amount of time with each other while we're
on the road; you just take your perspective of the song and have kind of a
deeper insight into it just through playing every night. It just helps everybody
evolve and play together a lot tighter.
PAUL
CASHMERE: Well, let's get to the last song on the second album because being an
old guy like me, I remember the old days of Led Zepplin! I think you guys have
really captured that essence of what made Led Zepplin exciting with Good Times
Gone. Is that what you set out to do?
NICKELBACK:
First of all, thanks for the compliment! We're deeply honoured by that. That's
really cool! Led Zepplin is especially a big thing for us. Just being in the
rhythm section our mutual idols are John Bonham and John Paul Jones. It's
actually a unique song on the record because of the vibe that was in the studio.
Ian from a band called "Big Wreck" (that are friends of ours) he
happened to be in town doing a press tour (he's an amazing guitar player). He
ended up making it to the studio. Mike just had his first born child so he ran
from the hospital to the studio and I was just flying back from my home town and
we've just gone into the studio to hook up with each other. Every single song
was basically done with a click on the record and I've just gone in and played
this particular song with no click - basically a couple of guys just playing
music and having a good time. Kinda the vibe that evolved from that was pretty
inspirational. You could feel the spontaneity of the song because we had never
played with Ian before - never rehearsed - he'd never heard the song before. He
sat down behind the beard and the microphone and we just did it! Music, that's
what it's all about!
PAUL
CASHMERE: Well, I tell you what, you've probably done wonders for his profile as
well because he really hasn't done much down this neck of the woods. He
performed on your album, your album's done well - it's probably going to up his
profile a bit!
NICKELBACK:
We hope so - hope it does a lot for him.
PAUL
CASHMERE: Because obviously powerful and exciting is what Nickelback strives
for? You could tell that from the first note when you first went on stage last
night. There was this wave of sound that came out. Do you feel it back?
NICKELBACK:
Oh yeah! Sometimes a little too much like in the show last night! Sometimes you
have to control yourself because you can get involved with the energy and tempos
as such, so you just have to hold back and have it hit you with moderation
rather than hitting you all at once when you get too excited. It was so
overwhelming last night. We're just so stoked to be here playing - to be here
for the first time and have the crowds react as they have been is cool for us.
Sometime we just have to go "Oh, hold on here - we're gonna play for an
hour and a half here! Not for forty five minutes!"
PAUL
CASHMERE: I imagine too, that being on the other side of the planet and
performing for the very first time in a country that you have never been to
before and people in the audience are singing every word to the songs - it must
knock you out as a band?
NICKELBACK:
Yeah! It's great! It's sort of the dream that never gets old! It's been slowly
building since Canada. We go across Canada and we see that happen and go
"Wow! That's cool!" Then we went through America and they start
singing our songs. Then we went to Germany and the same thing and then we came
over here and the same thing happens. Every time it happens it just never gets
old. It just blows your mind! They're not only singing the singles but they're
singing songs that they've obviously listened to both albums. I was watching a
few people singing pretty much every song we were doing last night! It was
pretty cool!
PAUL
CASHMERE: Another thing that impressed me about the Silverside Up album is that
it clocks in to just under forty minutes. It's really the old values of what
classic rock albums were based on? There's no filler. It's just the strongest
tracks the band has and that are what is put down for the album?
NICKELBACK:
There was a few interesting conversations with the business end of things. They
originally wanted fifteen songs - Thirteen for the record and two for the
"B" side. We came at it from two ways - the reasoning for doing only
ten. The ten songs that we did are clearly the strongest songs that we have and
we didn't really want to weigh it down with the dead wood that could be there -
that didn't make it on the record - or didn't get recorded - or something that
we're gonna continue to build on and work on and put it on the next record when
they're ready. Secondly, in the music business, we've learnt that from a royalty
stand point, you get paid for ten songs. Everything else you put on there is
free - you're giving them away to them and I don't think anyone should work for
nothing. You wouldn't expect it from the guy that works at the supermarket but
it seems to be acceptable from the music business! I don't think that we could
live with it either. You have fans that are buying the records and into the
music. We as a band would probably feel a little cheap if we just threw on a
couple of songs just for doing it. It's not really fair for them to just make it
more. Three more songs just to make it over sixty minutes! That's where the
meeting between art and commerce comes in. You can't meet them - they have to
stay separate. The way we do things with all of our records is be concise. This
is the best of us at this time. This is not a mystery - this is us! We want to
put our best foot forward. We don't want to put something up that's half of us.
PAUL
CASHMERE: Does that mean that you'll be potentially putting out an album every
year or every eighteen months? As opposed to most bands that put out the "seventy-seven"
minute album and do one every four to five years?
NICKELBACK:
Hopefully! It seems to me that the way it works, you put together an album then
you get out and work and tour it until it's no longer working anymore or it's no
longer climbing the charts or whatever. We make a record and so sometimes the
concise forty minute album does take two or three years just because it doesn't
burn out with the people and it continues to be a saleable product - exciting to
the people for a longer period of time, rather than a year or eighteen months
and it's dried up and gone. That's what happened with our last record in the
States. For us, after three years of releasing in Canada, we were still on our
fifth single. It was charting highly in Canada and continuing to sell in Canada.
So, we had the legs on the last record that you dream about - and it's still
running!
PAUL
CASHMERE: Rumour has it that Chad copped a bit of shit from the lyrics of the
first album? From the people within the band and therefore redefined the lyrical
content of the second album? Is that just a nasty rumour that is circulating?
NICKELBACK:
I never heard that! I think that was misinterpreted. It was more like that Chad
got some emails. Before, we used to run it that we would answer emails that the
fans would send in and say "…what does this song mean...one verse is
different to the second verse…". It was very metaphoric. I think this
time the songs were written through life experiences - and get right to the
point.
PAUL
CASHMERE: Let's talk about Rick Parashar who worked with Pearl Jam and Blind
Melon. A guy that has that sort of experience - what does he bring to the table
when you're in the studio?
NICKELBACK:
Exactly that - loads of experience. Tons of it! He's just been in the studio and
has created some of the biggest rock records of the last ten or twenty years.
Pearl Jam is arguably one of the biggest ever as far as sales go. It's a shoe-in
for being part of the world's top ten rock albums. So he comes with this 'built
in' experience. He's made those albums. He's done that - he knows how to get the
best out of a band. That was what we found he brought - the ability to draw out
the best Nickelback songs out of Nickelback. A good thing about that too is that
he was very into it. He wanted to make things happen. You'll find in situations
that you get with a big name producer but he's just punching the clock and
waiting for that next big project or whatever. It's important to find the people
that are into it, the team and everybody is working together - that's a big key
too.
PAUL
CASHMERE: Well, Platinum album in the states now. He's definitely going to have
your name on his resume.
NICKELBACK:
Absolutely!
PAUL
CASHMERE: Congratulations on holding the most spins in a modern rock format in
one week! You broke the record for airplay?
NICKELBACK:
Sugar Ray was holding the record on the modern rock format for American rock
radio - it's a very concise statistic. The most times an album was spun in a
week in American rock format was something like twenty nine hundred times in
modern rock format and we did three thousand and sixteen or something. We
completely obliterated the record. So that means that basically it's getting
played as much as it can be at all these modern rock stations.
PAUL
CASHMERE: The thing that amazed me was that someone actually keeps statistics
like that! If statistics like that exist, imagine what must be in the FBI files?
NICKELBACK:
Yeah! The American music scene places a lot of emphasis on the modern rock chart
- as being the one that receives the most emphasis, the most weight. That's the
one that everyone wants to be on top of.
PAUL
CASHMERE: You guys got to appear on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno? That must be
pretty nerve-racking because there are millions of people watching that show!
NICKELBACK:
Yeah, it's a little nerve-racking but you're also so excited about it. Mentally
that just takes care of that because you know you can't screw up. We've been
doing it for so long. It's more like an adrenalin rush. We used to watch it when
we were younger - watching our favourite bands - and then there we are, sitting
on that stage.
PAUL
CASHMERE: Well guys, good to have you here in Australia and hopefully back for a
bigger tour. Thanks for joining us at Undercover.
NICKELBACK:
Thanks.