"Krone" interview

Nickelback: “We were never actually fashionable”

Love and hate go hand in hand with this band - Canadian cult rockers Nickelback with Chad Kroeger (2nd from left) and Ryan Peake (2nd from right).

(Bild: Richard Beland)

A well-known German rock band once called one of their albums "Hated, damned, idolized..." - that would actually be the ideal album title for Nickelback. The Canadians are considered the most hated band in the world, but have also sold more than 50 million albums in their career and are the most played rock band of the 2000s. Before the Vienna concert, Ryan Peake takes a look back and also forward with us.

"Krone": Ryan, this spring you're coming back to us for a European tour for the first time in six long years ...
Ryan Peake: Yes, time has passed really quickly. We were very active before Corona, but afterwards things didn't go as they should have. It's definitely nice that we're finally coming back to you.

Six years ago was your last Austrian gig at Burg Clam, the last time you played in Vienna was in 2016.
I'll never forget that Clam show. The setting there was incredible. You're in an incredibly picturesque area that almost reminded me a bit of Canada. It was a great evening.

You've seen quite a lot of the world over the course of your career. Are there still areas you would like to explore and discover?
We are always open to everything and especially to places we have never seen before. The online world is a good way to filter out where people hear you and then you can plan accordingly. But you also have to be a bit careful with your requests, because the more you stray from the usual tour stops, the longer it takes to get back there. You mentioned it: six years without an Austrian gig. That's a huge amount of time. Of course you want to play everywhere, but in the end it's not that easy.

Metallica even played in Antarctica to finally be present on all continents.
(laughs) The guys are particularly motivated. But I grant them that with all my heart.

You actually come from a thrash metal background and listened to a lot of Metallica, Anthrax and the like when you were younger. Are you still deeply rooted in this scene?
Once you dip your toe into interesting waters, that interest never leaves you. Over the years, of course, I've broadened and widened my tastes, but the heroes of the early days are always there. I recently played Metallica's "Master Of Puppets" again because the song is so much fun. I listen to Metallica once, then Phoebe Bridgers again and then "Among The Living" by Anthrax again. I always come back to thrash metal, I love it. We also have a few songs that are similar in style and heaviness to the classics by Testament or Metallica and we always like to play around with them.

Mike Kroeger has said in interviews with you that if you hadn't released your 2022 album "Get Rollin'", he would have liked to record a Slayer cover album.
Mike loves to go public with such signal messages. (laughs) There's still a gap between wishes and reality. Mike would do it in a heartbeat, he has by far the hardest taste in music of all of us. He loves Slayer more than anything and would love to play "Show No Mercy" every night. We've written some very heavy songs and who knows - maybe one day you'll even hear a real thrash hit from us. (laughs)

Is it getting more difficult for you over the years to record new albums with Nickelback, to invent new directions and not to repeat yourselves all the time?
Sometimes, but we're actually doing quite well with it. Sometimes you have good ideas that you record and then realize that something similar already exists, but that's normal and happens again and again. Of course, it's best when you already have a concept and a sound in your head and you can really get going, but it's usually not that easy. Otherwise it would be boring. Sometimes you have to fight hard for your ideas and wishes, that's part of it.

Now that you've been producing them for 25 years, people primarily expect hits from you again and again. Don't you sometimes struggle with this constant expectation?
To be honest, I don't feel any pressure in that respect. We always try to get the best out of ourselves, but we don't beat ourselves up inside if the big radio hit doesn't materialize. Some songs are left longer because the feeling doesn't fit, others are finished straight away. At the end of the day, the music has to sound like us. We've always been very lucky that a record company has never talked us into it or tried to dictate how we should sound. They were always completely on our side, which isn't the case for all bands.

Neither we nor our fans would be happy if we followed external expectations. You can't always please people either. Some people complain that we only play the singles live and never the B-sides, but the majority of people want to hear the hits and we follow their wishes. If I spend a lot of money on a show, I don't want to hear 20 songs that I don't know or that are hidden somewhere as outtakes. (laughs) We already have such a rich back catalog that we can vary a lot, but there always have to be a few classics. It's all a big luxury problem.

Is there a particular Nickelback song that you yourself no longer want to hear or play because you're already sick of it?
Oh yes, definitely, but of course I won't tell you which one it is. (laughs) Playing a song over and over again every night for so many years is like writing the same poem every day. You can get a bit tired of it. But the fans also make these songs exciting, because when the cheers erupt and they react positively to them, every song played, however dead, is a new major event.

How many songs could you play spontaneously on demand? Are there still many, even older ones, just so present to you?
Wow, that's a good question. I recently came across an old cassette with recordings of one of our live shows from the late 1990s. When I listened more closely to one number, I suddenly realized that I had completely forgotten that we had ever written this song. (laughs) It wasn't even the name that woke me up, it was very strange. Sometimes we push ourselves at soundchecks and dig up a few old songs. Just to see how far we can get with it. We've written songs in different guitar tunings that we don't even remember. Please don't shout out rare demo tracks at the concert, it just embarrasses us. (laughs)

Do you have a large archive of ideas that you put aside when they don't fit and that you can always fall back on?
We really do sometimes. Normally we put ideas to one side and leave it at that. There has to be a good reason for us to go back into the archive and continue working on it. It tends to be individual riffs or lines of text that accumulate and then fit in somewhere. We have a large external hard disk with such ideas and the next time we visit the studio we will certainly have another look at what's on there.

Three of you came together in 1995, the year the band was founded, and the fourth has been with us for almost 20 years. What is the secret of your internal stability and how do you manage to get on so well together?
That's not so easy to answer, because the truth is I don't know why that is. It's my first and only experience in a real band. I'd say we've been touring constantly since about 2000. We have different tour buses for half the band, which has definitely improved the relationship. There's a party faction and one that wants it less. If you split up properly, everyone is helped. When we released "How You Remind Me" and everything changed, we gave ourselves enough freedom right from the start.

Mike and I took our families on tour with us and we were able to carry on with our lives as normal. Most tensions arise from not giving each other enough space. The four of us are all fundamentally different and do the best we can to function as a band and combine our strengths. We are not solo artists and have to make compromises. This band is like a long marriage and it goes through ups and downs. But the mutual respect has always been there and I think that's the most important thing to stay as intact as we are.

You weren't a band that became superstars overnight, but from "How You Remind Me" it happened very quickly. Was the good camaraderie between you and the band itself never in danger of imploding?
Absolutely. There have been many moments when we've been tested, because success has naturally challenged everyone. But one reason why we're still around is certainly that we knew how to categorize success and worked hard for a long time. When one of your first singles is so successful, you're riding a wave of success, but at some point you get knocked off it and people expect the same thing again, only better. An expectation that no artist can fulfill. We've always brought out the best in ourselves and perhaps that's why we've found a way to connect with the fans. Of course we were lucky, because the timing also has to be right. There were always tensions from time to time, but that's the case everywhere and in the end we always had the common goal of taking the band forward. Today we understand each other much better than we used to and we know which buttons to push and which not to push. That's an advantage of age.

From your point of view, is there actually a difference between a band like yours perceiving and enjoying great success differently, as in the era of physical products, i.e. CDs, or as today in the streaming era?
It's quite difficult to find a successful young rock band today. (laughs) I don't want to disrespect anyone here, by God I don't, but even for us it was quite difficult to be successful as a rock band. We were out of fashion right from the start. (laughs) Today you reach people in different ways and have to act differently as a band than you did 20-25 years ago. I don't know what's better either. Back in the days of the CD, there were much stricter gatekeepers. The record companies sorted out bands that got a contract in the first place. Then radio stations and magazines were very strict about who they played and who they wanted to report on. It was incredibly difficult to stand out and become known. Today, anyone can record and publish anything anywhere.

You can listen to the whole world online today, upload your own music and hope for success - on the other hand, people are overwhelmed because there is too much of everything. But it's nice that you can discover music that you would never have come across back then. A really good band will always prevail. It will be heard, even if I don't know exactly how you manage that today. Longevity is more difficult and it's hard to make money anymore. There used to be several areas where you could earn money as a band. Today it's almost only possible live, because as a songwriter you hardly make any money. But I'm not giving up hope that rock bands will always prevail.

You recently shot the documentary "Love To Hate: Nickelback". What was the main focus during filming?
There was no real focus when we started. Originally, we wanted to make a visual supplement for the 2017 album "Feed The Machine" - that was all we had planned at the beginning. However, the realization went so well that we discussed internally about expanding the project to an entire documentary. The main idea was that the Nickelback family could be more organized with a few old photos and video recordings. Then it occurred to us that the fans might also like it, but it was never our goal to get it into a movie theater or a film festival. That surprised me myself. Our career has been accompanied by a lot of online hate and we wanted to show our perspective on all that. We didn't tie our entire career into the movie, but first and foremost we wanted to let ourselves speak for once. After all, we have accompanied and lived through the journey most intensively. Perhaps the autobiography will also be available to read at some point. (laughs)

Live in Vienna
As part of their big "Get Rollin'" world tour, top Canadian rockers Nickelback are finally coming back to us after years of absence. Tickets are still available at www.oeticket.com when Chad Kroeger, Ryan Peake and co. cause a sensation on June 4.