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From Kerrang magazine
15th June 2002
King Of Pain:
CHAD KROEGER looks down at his boots and thinks long and hard
about what he should say. The 27-year-old Nickelback singer and guitarist sits
in the lounge area of the tour bus he shares with drummer Ryan Vikedal. The bus
is parked at the rear of the Los Angeles Palladium, where Nickelback are about
to play another sold out show in support of their third record, 'Silver Side
Up', the biggest selling album of 2002 in the UK and one that's four times
platinum here in America.
It is on 'Too Bad', a forthcoming single from this album,
that
Chad Kroeger addresses the father he never
knew as a child. Chad was 18 when he discovered that he and his elder brother
Mike, Nickelback's
bassist,
have different fathers. "When I did find out I was drunk and it
got ugly,"
he sighs. "I kicked my mother's bedroom door in at four o'clock in the morning.
I was crying and screaming, 'How could you f**king do that to me? You don't tell
me that he's my half-brother for
18 years and I find out through a rumour from
somebody else in the family? How f**king dare you?' "F**k," he says, shaking his
head. "It
was nasty."
He pauses in silence for a few seconds, the hum of the bus' air-conditioning the
only sound. "There's a lot of shit that I needed to get off my chest," he says,
"and when I was writing 'Too Bad' it felt so good to be so honest. Probably what
gives 'Silver Side Up' so much depth is the fact that I've opened up that big
Kroeger diary." Nine years on. Chad has a solid relationship with his natural
father, who has listened to 'Too Bad' - to its themes of confusion and hurt,
sadness and resolve - and likes the song. "I definitely didn't take my father's
feelings into consideration when I wrote that song," he sighs. "I was laying it
on the line. But I told him, 'This is just my point of view, that's all. I'm not
saying you're a bad person, I'm Just saying you weren't there'." Today, Chad
Kroeger is happier than he has ever been. Following the success of Nickelback's
transatlantic hit single 'How You Remind Me', Kroeger states that he need never
work again. He is also "very much in love" with a girl named Marianne, whom he
met at a Nickelback gig six months ago. But his life story, as openly documented
in Nickelback's songs, is one of childhood trauma, petty crime, drugs, family
heartbreak and failed relationships. As the song says,
'I've been wrong, I've been down, been to the bottom of every bottle'.
CHAD ROBERT Kroeger was born on November 15, 1974 in Hanna, Alberta, a small
farming community (population: 3,000) in Western Canada. His mother was a rock
fan whose love of Led Zeppelin, Queen and Pink Floyd has a profound influence on
her two sons. Their stepfather, a welder, was a church-going disciplinarian
("He'd beat the hell out of me," the singer recalls). Inevitably, the young Chad
Kroeger rebelled against authority. He was frequently involved in fights and
vandalism. He broke into his school 11 times to steal money. At the age of 14,
he was sent to a correctional facility for young offenders. "I don't know if I
was an angry kid," he shrugs. "I just had this little demon inside me saying,
'Pick up that rock and throw it through that window'. I was a little bastard.
Then somebody ratted on me and away I went. It was Jail for kids, except I was
14 and I was in with a bunch of 17- year-olds. I was a fresh little teenager and
they were Just getting ready to be men." Once his brief term was completed,
Kroeger vowed never to return. "F**k that!" he snorts. "There's got to be a
better way to get through life. It was really nice to grow out of that juvenile
bullshit and start developing good relationships with a steady circle of
friends." Some of these friends liked to smoke pot and drop acid, but as they
lay around babbling about how wasted they were feeling, Chad's drug experiences
were truly revelatory. "I found that I had a great resistance to it and remained
very coherent. Suddenly the world started to become really clear. I understood
how the big machine works. When I watched 'Fight Club' and Brad Pitt went into
the spiel about everybody trying
to sell you
shit that you don't need, I had that revelation 10 years before when I was
stoned on mushrooms." Once out of High School, the 18-year-old Kroeger formed
his first professional band.
They learned
50 songs - Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Lenny Kravitz - and gigged in bars,
with Mike Kroeger acting as booking agent. To this day, Mike keeps a keen eye on
Nickelback's business. "I'm more involved with the business than other
musicians, and they're the ones who are normally being taken advantage of," he
notes. "You only get one career, so you've got to know what's going on." For
four years, the Kroegers played in separate covers bands before joining in a new
outfit with guitarist Ryan Peake. Born in Calgary on March 1, 1973, Peake
befriended the Kroegers after his family relocated to Hanna from nearby Brooks.
The new band was booked by their agent as Point Of View, but onstage, they
preferred the name Village Idiot. "It's got a bit more character," Mike Kroeger
says, smiling, "and at that time we -catering to the beer-swilling, pool-playing
masses. They don't want to hear anything remotely creative at all." This changed
in 1996 when Chad Kroeger grew tired of rehashing Lenny Kravitz hits and spent a
day at his mother's
house
writing seven original songs. A friend of Mike Kroeger's booked time at a
Vancouver recording studio, and with $1,500 borrowed from their stepfather, the
Kroegers, with Peake and their cousin Brandon on drums, cut their debut EP, 'Hesher'.
At the time the band was named Brick ("We couldn't think of anything better,"
Mike Kroeger admits), but before they returned to Vancouver to record a full
album, the independently-released 'Curb', Mike suggested the name Nickelback.
The name came to him while he was working the cash register at a Starbucks in
Vancouver. He lost count of the times he handed five cents change to a customer
and smiled, "There's a nickel back". Unsurprisingly, Mike Kroeger never
considered Starbucks a career option. "Eventually," he says, "I told the manager
to f**k off, which is why to this day I can't work at Starbucks ever again.
Believe me, I tried to get rehired in a dark
moment."
Ten days before Nickelback began recording their second album, 'The State',
Brandon quit to raise a family. Ryan Peake knew the man to call. Ryan Vikedal
was a drummer Peake knew from Brooks, where both had grown up. "What else do you
do in a small town but buy a drum kit and some Led Zeppelin albums?" Vikedal
says today, only half-jokingly. Vikedal left Brooks for Edmonton, where he
attended a music college by day and earned $100 a night playing jazz. When he
auditioned for Nickelback, he was halfway through the first song when Chad
Kroeger called a halt to proceedings and announced, "You're in". Re-christened 'Nik'
by his new bandmates - to avoid confusion with Ryan Peake and because he has a
vague resemblance to actor Nick Nolte - Vikedal learned a dozen songs in a week
prior to cutting 'The State', which was again released independently to little
fanfare in 1999. But when the band's agent and lawyer sent the record to Ron
Burman, Vice President of A&R at Roadrunner Records, Nickelback got the break
they needed.
"They had some amazing songs on 'The State'," Burman says. "Also, they had a
great work ethic. They really wanted the success and showed they would work hard
to make their own career happen. This is rare these days, as so many bands wait
for the record label to do all of the work." On 'The State', Chad Kroeger's
lyrics were wilfully obtuse.'I was there when there was nobody home', he sang on
'Cowboy Hat' without ever getting into the details. "It was easy for me to hide
behind metaphors when I was talking about some really dark and deep-seated
stuff," he says. "It was like wearing a mask." Only when Kroeger found the
courage to write candidly of his life on 'Silver Side Up' did a Nickelback song
connect with millions of people. That song was 'How You Remind Me', which
reached the top of the US chart on December 22, 2001. "When Chad sent me the
demo, I was like, 'Oh my f**king God, what a huge smash'," remembers Ron Burman.
"I actually got chills when I first heard it. It's just such a catchy and
memorable tune. Roadrunner had never previously had a commercial crossover song
like this before, so we didn't quite grasp the worldwide scope of it. It really
sunk in when I looked at the Billboard International Chart and saw us in the Top
10 in eight different countries." "I was really pissed off at my girlfriend when
I was writing it," Kroeger explains. "I needed to write the 'I hate you' song
and really let her know how I felt. When I played it to her she said, 'I really
like that song', and I'm like, 'Aarrggh!!! That's denial!'. There's so much
honesty in the song, [ike someone's holding up a mirror in front of you. I've
actually studied the song and it's extremely well written: it's got three hooks
and they're all tied into the topic of relationships, which everybody can
identify with. It's our hit. It's our 'Stairway To Heaven', our 'Hotel
California'. It is," he concludes, "a song that Nickelback's never going to be
able to duplicate."
THE ASTONISHING popularity of 'How You Remind Me' affords Nickelback a degree of
luxury on tour. The band are currently travelling across North America in two
tour buses; one for Chad and Nik, the other for the happily married Mike Kroeger
and Ryan Peake. The latter, dubbed "the boring bus" by Peake, is stocked with
children's toys and emergency supplies of pampers for when Mike's wife, Angela,
and one-year-old son, Dawson, join him on the
road. There is a picture of Dawson in the back lounge of the bus, holding a
baseball bat in the manner of an aspiring guitarist.
Mike Kroeger
is a devout Christian who attends a Pentecostal church near Hanna. When speaking
of his son, the bassist's faith takes on a potentially homicidal air. "When
Dawson was born, I was moved
to a point beyond tears. Something just changed very drastically inside me. Your
life is suddenly secondary. I would die and kill for that guy."
Ryan Peake has been married for 18 months to Trenna, who works for a children's
charity. Their relationship began eight years ago, long before Nickelback got
famous. Peake is keen to stress this point. "She likes me for who I am," he
says. "I'm f**king paranoid about that shit." The "fun bus", home to Chad
Kroeger and Ryan Vikedal, is littered with toys of a different kind; a motorised
scooter and a miniature motorcycle, 15 inches high, with a top speed of 60mph.
Ryan Peake takes a spin on the mini-motorbike in the backstage car park before
the LA show, wobbling in a manner that would give the band's manager sleepless
nights. The mini-bike cost Chad Kroeger $2,200."For a tiny little motorbike?
It's retarded!" Kroeger laughs. "But why not buy things that make me happy? The
road is my life – we have to try to capitalise on what Nickelback is doing right
now, and to do that we need to stay on the road. That's why we have a brand new
tour bus. The whole side of the bus extends out to make a bigger lounge because
we need to make our surroundings as comfortable as possible."
Both Kroeger and Vikedal were single when Nickelback embarked on their current
tour. As the tour progressed, so the 'action' increased on their bus, as Kroeger
explains. "If I just wanted a one-night stand, it
doesn't hurt to be in my position, because being in a rock band is probably the
easiest way to get laid. And the more successful you are, the easier it gets. I
had my fun last year, but after a time you realise you're just wasting time. It
got to the point where I was sick of one-night stands and wanted to be in love
with someone,"
Now Kroeger is enjoying a meaningful, long-term relationship, while Vikedal has
fallen for a girl he met when Nickelback played in Tokyo in May. He plans to see
her again when the band come off the road in
August. Both he and Kroeger are happier now. There were times, Kroeger admits,
when the fun bus wasn't much fun at all; when he wished he were on the boring
bus with a wife of his own.
"I
wanted to find somebody that I can spend the rest of my life with. I don't want
to be 40 and wake up next to somebody and think, 'Oh, I met her in a club last
night'. I'm not ready for children yet, but I want to get started with the
relationship. Finding the right person? F**k, it's hard as hell." Oddly, when
Kroeger did meet the right person six months ago, it was a girl who used to cut
his grandmother's hair.
"For someone in my position, six months is very long term," he says. "I saw her
and just - POW! And none of my rock star bullshit was working, which made it
even cooler. She's the f**king coolest thing in my life."
Kroeger is beaming, but for a man who wrote the most popular song of 2002 about
a f**ked-up relationship, being in love might not be such a smart career move,
Kroeger agrees. "I need to have my f**king heart ripped out of my chest and
thrown on the ground and stomped on!" he cackles. "There's no motivation like
that. "F**k," he adds soberly. "When Marianne breaks my heart, I will put 'How
You Remind Me' to shame!"
WHEN NICKELBACK take to the stage at the Los Angeles Palladium, it is apparent
that the new, loved-up Chad Kroeger still has plenty of bitter experience to
draw on, Nickelback perform a new song titled 'Figured You Out' in which Kroeger
sings the lines:'/ love the good times that you wreck/I love your lack of
self-respect/While you're passed out on the deck/I love my hands around your
neck...'
After the show, he reveals the inspiration behind the song. Sometimes you get
into a little fling and you think you know the person, and the next thing you
know, you're dating a cokehead who's interwoven into some underground drug world
with Hells Angels and movie stars and models and you're like 'What the f**k am I
doing?!'." As a teenage Metallica fan, Chad Kroeger wanted to be Kirk Hammett so
bad it hurt. Onstage in Los Angeles, he resembles James Hetfield. The comparison
delights Kroeger.
"I take that
as the hugest compliment that anybody has ever paid me in my entire life. I
couldn't kick the grin off my face right now. The way I stand - it's full-on
James Hetfield! You get your rock stance on - who are you gonna mimic?" "There's
something about singers," says Mike Kroeger. "A certain personality type.
I'm not that
person. I see the way it is being Chad and I'd quit if I was him, but he needs
to be recognised and appreciated to
feel whole.
He's driven to impact people or a personal level."
"Chad has really laid himself on the table and that's hard," adds Ryan Peake.
"You're putting yourself up for judgement.
I do respect
the guy for that."
For his
part, Chad Kroeger is accepting of the highs and lows of life as a high-profile
rock star. He is touched by the response of women to 'Never Again', his tirade
against domestic abuse. And he is vigorous in defending the allegations in a
previous Kerrang! feature that he acted like "a c**t" in ordering security staff
at a concert to eject a member of the crowd who was abusing him.
"I'm a pretty nice guy," Kroeger shrugs, "but that kid was giving me one hell of
a hard time while I was trying to entertain thousands of people. Yes, I did stop
the show and ask to have him removed. This
guy is in
the front row telling me I suck - that makes it impossible for me to do my job.
When they pulled him out of the crowd I said, 'Everybody wave goodbye', and the
whole place cheered. I know for a fact that I have six million fans - and that's
just the ones I can count, who bought the album. I wonder how many fans he's
got."
As for the
future, Roadrunner's Ron Burman predicts that Chad Kroeger will lead Nickelback
to even greater success. "Chad and the guys are very talented songwriters and
very prolific," he says.
"They're
constantly writing and working on new material, more than I've ever seen any
artist do. We are all very excited about the
next album,
and from what we have already gotten a glimpse of, it will have some great songs
and hits on it." Kroeger himself remains philosophical as ever. "When it comes
time to record that next
album I'm definitely gonna feel that crunch. 'How You Remind Me' can be played
on any radio station anywhere. It's such a huge song. I've set the bar pretty
high."