nickelBack

Guitar One
March 2002
cover story
Oh Canada! NICKELBACK Turning Silver into Platinum
pg. 80
by: Lyndsey Parker
The unexpected mega-success of "How You Remind Me" has Nickelback on a nonstop schedule of gigs, interviews, and personal appearances. With such a busy agenda, we had to ask guitarists Chad Kroeger and Ryan Peake one simple question: "Are we having fun yet?"

It's a quarter past 8 PM at "Rockline" headquarters in the San Fernando Valley when Nickelback guitarists Chad Kroeger and Ryan Peake come rushing in, fresh from taping "The Tonight Show," their US-television debut, at NBC studos in beautiful downtown Burbank. Still clad in their camera-friendly finery (a long-sleeved, skull-and-crossbones tee for the gangly, goateed Kroeger, a crimson cowboy shirt for the shaggy-haired, boyish Peake), they scarcely have time to sample the culinary delights of the green room's snack table before "Rockline" hits the air. And their day is still far from over: After answering fans' questions on the call-in radio show, their next stop will be the "Loveline" studios, where they'll spend a couple hours helping Dr. Drew field anonymous questions about breast reductions and the use of ice cubes during foreplay. And then, sometime after midnight, it'll be Guitar One's turn to interrogate them before their tour bus whisks them away on an overnight drive to Tucson. With such a demanding promotional schedule barely allowing them a spare moment to reflect on the runaway success of their new album, Silver Side Up, surely Canada's latest hard rock contenders must be asking themselves the question repeated in the chorus of that album's smash single, "How You Remind Me": "Are we having fun yet?"

Actually, though the guys are understandably exhausted, they're still managing to enjoy themselves. Close friends since their preteens, Kroeger and Peake spend much of their Guitar One interview- conducted entirely in the backseat of their publicist's car- scouring the city streets for a 24-hour fast-food joing and teasing each other like a couple of joyriding junior-high kids.

For starters, when asked why these childhood cronies didn't start playing music together until they were 21 years old (in a proto-Nickelback cover band called Village Idiot in their small hometown of Hanna, Alberta), Peake cracks, "Well, I like playing with good musicians, initially! So finally, Chad got to my level..."

"Yeah, it took me about a year!" Kroeger retorts dryly, not missing a beat. While discussing the first instruments they picked up as teens, Kroeger can't resist sneaking in his own jab: "Ryan's first instrument was the skin flute..."

All kidding aside, Peake's first guitars were his country-musician father's old acoustic ("It survived a house fire: it has a natural sunburst finish," explains Peake) and his "master of one-string songs": a $100 Profile with a snazzy red-and-black spider-web design.

"I remember the first time I saw Ryan playing that Profile, too," Kroeger reminisces. "I hadn't even started playing the guitar yet, and I still knew he was playing it wrong!"

"Yeah, and I knew Chad was an arrogant asshole back then- as he is now!" Peake counters, with an impish grin.

But seriously, folks, this squabbling is all in good fun. The truth is, Kroeger and Peake complement each other perfectly. Case in point: Peake's personal guitar hero is James Hetfield, while Kroeger's is Kirk Hammett. Their partnership is fundamental to Nickelback's muscual guitar-heavy sound. "Ryan's the first guy I call whenever I have a new riff," says frontman and chief songwriter Kroeger. "Whenever I'm like, 'Okay, this si cool, I've got a skeleton, a verse, a chorus,' I'll call him and play it for him over the phone, and he'll say, 'I like the verse, but in the chorus it's really repetitive. Why don't you try something else?' And I'll say, 'Okay, good, that's all I need. I'll call you back in an hour!' He's the one who listens to the song and can see where I'm going with it, instead of instantly trying to pull me in one direction."
This camaraderie certainly made for some interesting sessions at Vancouver's Green House studio, where Nickelback, whose luneup also includes jazz-trained drummer Ryan Vikedal and Kroeger's older brother Mike on bass, recorded Silver Side Up with producer Rick Parashar (Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains). "We got really creative at 1:30, 2:00 in the morning. We started getting a little tired and getting these zany ideas, and then we were like, 'Let's just try it!'" Kroeger recalls. "Rick would leave the studio, and then we'd go to work. We'd bring out binders, mike 'em up, and start tapping on them, and we'd distort it and put it over parts."

"Nothing is ludicrous in the studio," Peake interjects. "You can do anything you want, and the weirdest idea can sound really cool. For instance, I got to sit in the studio and make as many weird noises with a space echo as I could for about 45 minutes. I sat there banging my guitar... I must have looked like one of those modern dancers, slapping my hands on it, tapping it, raking it, vibrating my guitar, trying to get some interesting, different noises."

"We were smashing beer bottles on top of cymbals, so we would get this great splashing sound," Kroeger chuckles. "Or, you know how sometimes you'll get this sort of feedback loop going somewhere in the console, and you won't know where it's coming from? Well, we had this lo-fi sound coming from the drums- every time there'd be a pause, you'd hear a squealing noise. It sounded awesome, like this explosive, distorted drum sound with crazy feedback!"

Peake laughs, "Our drummer was like, 'Something's wrong.' And I'm like, 'No, no no, something's right! Record this! Somebody please record this!'"

"There are a million things you can do in the studio. We were trying all sorts of stuff," says Kroeger. "It was sort of like we were the dwarves in the tinker shop: We would come out at night and do all our stuff, and Rick would come back in the morning and go, 'Oh, yeah, this is cool.'"

The whole Silver Side Up "tinker-shop" experience was definitely cooler than the less leisurely recording of 2000's breakthrough The State- which was funded with $30,000 of the band's own money- or Nickelback's previous two self-released, low-budget discs, Hesher and Curb. "The thing I liked was we took a little more time to play and have fun this time around," muses Peake. "We never could do that before; we were on such a tight budget, and we just had to get the stuff done. With this one, it was like, 'Okay, this song's pretty much done, now what kind of coloring can we add?'"

Despite its many eccentric "colorings," Silver Side Up is surprisingly and refreshingly unfussy, reminiscent of early-90's riff-rockers like Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. But while Nickelback may pack a powerful hard-rock punch- no doubt due to Kroeger and Peake's shared love of Metallica and Megadeth and the many teenhood hours Peake logged practicing "one-string songs" like Judas Priest's "Love Bites" and Iron Maiden't "Wasted Years"- Kroeger still adamantly insists, "I don't think the word 'metal' belongs anywhere in the definition of Nickelback. We're just rock'n'roll. If we sound hard for a couple of minutes, that just makes us hard rock. We don't enter the arena of metal, ever."

Unlike the ungainly efforts of today's chest-thumping testoste-rockers, Silver Side Up is a more melodic, meat-and-potatoes record, the type that appeals to classic rock diehards and prepubescent nu-metalheads aliks. "How You Remind Me," with its multiple hooks, massive shout-along chorus, and earnest, gravelly vocals, is already a crossover megahit- breaking all sorts of airplay records on modern rock, mainstream rock, and Top 40 radio- and it seems that practically every other first-pumping, radio-ready anthem on the album ("Never Again," "Woke Up This Morning," "Too Bad," "Hangnail") has the potential to follow suit. "You get your record played on the radio, radio brings people to your shows, and you sell a shitload of albums! That's pretty much it in a nutshell," Peake says matter-of-factly of Silver Side Up's success strategy, which is obviously working wonderfully.

The album's bluesy, slow-burn final track, "Good Times Gone," is another highlight, showcasing the soulful slide guitar work of Big Wreck's Ian Thornley, the Boston band that gave Nickelback their first "big" Canadian tour. ("Six shows!" laughs Peake. "But, hey, it went out as far as Ontario, and for us, that was quite a drive.") Peake evidently thinks quite highly of his former tourmate, as he allowed Thornley to play his cherished '58 Telecaster, a guitar he loves so much he won't even risk taking it on the road. "I used to, but not anymore, because now I can afford guitars where I'm not so paranoid if I smash them or ding them," he explains. "That guitar is just priceless as far as I'm concerned! I had a '68 Gibson 345 that I also liked, and it got stolen. I didn't want that to hapen to my other guitar, so I buy new ones now, because I don't care what happens to those."

Nickelback have been sharpening their stage skills through relentless touring (with or without Peake's prized Telecaster) since their Village Idiot days- back when their Urge Overkill and Doughboys covers scared away the regular customers at Alberta watering holes. If their current coast-to-coast whirlwind tour is any indication, they won't be slowing down any time soon. But just how easily can they play Silver Side Up's elaborately recorded songs live, without resorting to shattering beer bottles over the drum kit or breaking out in Peake's groovy modern dance moves? "We pride ourselves on sounding like our album. we can recreate it onstage," assures Peake. "With the very odd, little nuance that we just thought would sound cool on the disc, we'll use a reasonable substitute, a variation, but it's never that far from the original at all. We may change it a little bit just for our own flavor, but we definitely like being able to sound as close to the album as possible, and being able to perform it just as well."

As a matter of fact, hard rock fans who check out Nickelback's show will be pleased to discover how much more abrasive and intense Kroeger and company become when they hit the stage. "If you like the CD, great. But come see us play, because that's when we really get out point across," Peake says of Nickelback's live vibe. "We enjoy playing our music, and you can see that. That's a huge part of Nickelback. Hopefully you'll walk away from our live show saying you enjoyed it because we sound like our album, only bigger."

Speaking of "bigger," as we pull into the West Hollywood parking lot where Nickelback's tour bus- an enormous, chrome-plated motel on wheels- awaits, suddenly it's clear how very far these Canadian road warriors have come. After all, just a few years ago, they were cramming all their equipment into the back of Peake's frequently malfunctioning Chevy Cavalier. A slightly weary but unquestionably happy Kroeger admits he's still amazed by the blockbuster success of Silver Side Up, which sold 30,000 copies on its very first day of release and has been a fixture in the upper reaches of the Billboard Top 200 ever since. "We knew we were making a good record, but we didn't know it was going to do what it's doing- especially so fast!" he marvels. "This isn't just growing... it's exploding!" As he clambers out of the car, he smiles broadly, adding, "It feels really great."

So, are Nickelback having fun yet? Oh, yes. In fact, they're just getting started.