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.