Imagine your band sold over 50 million albums worldwide, only 23 million of those in the United States. Your band sold millions of concert tickets on its past few tours. Your band had more than two dozen charting singles – enough so that you could do a hits-only setlist at every performance, if you wanted. Members of bands that had inspired you (e.g. Alice In Chains, Pantera) mutually appreciated your band and appeared on your albums. And yet Rolling Stone named your band the second worst of 1990s; Creed occupying that top spot, of course. If I were in that situation, I don’t think that I would leave the house very much.
Bassist Mike Kroeger, who can take pride in having accomplished all of the things mentioned above on top of 12 Juno Awards, six Billboard Music Awards and five Kerrang! Awards, sings a very different tune. Mike – who came up with the band’s name while working at Starbucks – takes the majority of Nickelback‘s criticism very lightly. The fans are the immediately priority, and the mostly-anonymous haters are only putting out negativity into the world.
Back in November, Nickelback released their eighth studio album, “No Fixed Address.” While this album does deliver the hard yet radio-friendly rock that long-time fans have come to expect, it also takes a few left turns. One example of that being “Got Me Runnin’ Round,” which features rapper Flo Rida and some horns. “No Fixed Address” also includes a few songs co-written with outside collaborators like Jacob Kasher (writer of songs for Lil Wayne, Fifth Harmony and Weezer) and Josh Ramsay (Marianas Trench vocalist who also co-wrote Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”).
In support of “No Fixed Address,” Nickelback began a 61-city tour of arenas and amphitheaters, with Lifehouse opening the remaining dates. Although there are no New York City dates on the agenda, the band comes close to the area on August 14th (Nikon at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, NY), August 15th (Mohegan Arena in Uncasville, CT), August 21st (PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ), and August 22nd (Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden, NJ).
Mike kindly took some time to talk about Nickelback’s past, present and future with no topic off-limits. As Mike is more conversational in interviews than your average musician subject, here are some highlights from our phone conversation, which he conducted from his part-time residence in British Columbia; when not on the road, he calls Hawaii home.
From what I hear, you are the only member of Nickelback who lives outside of Canada. How does that work with the logistics of writing and recording an album?
Mike Kroeger: We do our writing all together. We get in the room with acoustic guitars and a pen and paper. When it comes time to record, that’s something that — god bless technology — you don’t have to be there. I was recording a lot of my parts in Hawaii in my garage wearing a pair of board shorts and flip flips, sitting in front of my computer there. I would just receive the entire session of a song, all the recorded parts, I would just record my parts, e-mail them in and they would be edited and mixed…it was great.
I would imagine that to be a different approach from the recording you did with [AC/DC, Def Leppard, Shania Twain and Maroon 5 producer] Robert “Mutt” Lange:
M: Yes, vastly different approach. Although we did some of that recording in Switzerland at his studio before we did it at Chad’s studio, there’s an element of travel in that one, too. No, there was no remote “sending in big gigs of bass tapes,” that wasn’t happening…We had read and heard all this Stephen Hawking, “mad science” kind of, “he takes six weeks to get a kick drum sound,” but we didn’t do anything like that. We did some experimentation and we were dreadfully careful of what we let get through. We would be perfectionists and try to get the best emotional qualities out of everything, whether it was drums or anything…I don’t know anyone like him, he’s a one-off. There was a level of attention-to-detail that was epic in nature, no doubt, but nothing too crazy. The thing I can say about that guy in a factual nature, one hell of a singer, pretty good guitar player, incredible bass player. I don’t want to tell too many stories out of school here, but let’s just put it this way: his voice is a big part of those walls of vocals you hear, not to name names. He can sing like anybody, everybody. His gift as a singer is just immeasurable. I wish he would perform.
How does touring for Nickelback in 2015 compare to that from 10 years ago?
M: (laughs) I suppose that one similarity is that there’s still the four of us playing music on-stage. Aside from that, I think everything else is different. It’s way more safe and that just comes with the function of experience. As your budget increases and your ability to live better increases, you get to be a little smarter about things. Thank god that comes as we’re aging. If we tried to run like we did 10 years ago, we’d probably have to travel with a doctor…We kind of have developed our touring systems — for lack of a better term — we’ve established how we like to do things, and our modes are all established so there is a predictability and not very many surprises. We like it that way. We know how we like things. Our staff and crew happily oblige and try to make us look cool every night, and we all try to get rest on our days off.
Nickelback is unique in that you’ve sold millions upon millions of albums, and millions of concert tickets, yet there’s always been a big backlash against your band. Does that affect you?
M: Well first thing’s first, let’s talk about the legitimacy of the source. Like you said, millions upon millions of records sold, for sure, that’s done, that’s just math.
Millions and millions of concert tickets sold, that’s math, too. Backlash of haters, hmm, somebody’s full of shit, somebody’s fucking lying, and that’s okay. I just feel like that there has got to be a level of contradiction that is heroic in nature. These people who are saying these things, it’s an echo chamber. I’ve said it in other interviews that we, in especially North America and Britain and other countries, we like echo chambers. We like to go to places where we know what everybody is gonna say, because that’s how we like it. We don’t want anyone to challenge these ideas, we want the echo chamber. It’s like a Rorshach test…The fact of the matter is for every hater comment, there is an iTunes playlist that says otherwise (laughs). Those people probably go to the gym and listen to my band when they work out, and then viciously talk shit. You know what? It’s okay. I can’t possibly accept the legitimacy of the hatersphere in mass, just because I don’t know who these people are. They don’t come with identities, they have names like “dickweed456@verizon.net” — get the fuck out of here, I’m not going to believe you (laughs). You know what I mean? There’s just no way…You have to be able to consider the source to consider the legitimacy of the commentary, and you can’t do that. In bringing this around from a heavy place, from some place it should be, which is a lot lighter than that, is I like these things for their inherent hilarious nature. I find that world to just be a whole bunch of people just trying to be funny. Some of them really are, and when they’re funny, I’ll laugh at me, I’ll laugh at whatever, whoever, anyone, even people that are supposedly beyond reproach, which I don’t know even know who that is anymore. It’s not a new concept, mean people suck. Not a new concept, but nevertheless, true.
You have a lot of famous fans, and I believe [Coldplay singer] Chris Martin is one of them…
M: Well, I’m going to let Chris Martin off the hook here. What was happening was when Coldplay was doing really really well, and he was having to do a lot of interviews…We were doing really really well, too, but the “backlash” and shit-talking was at levels just right through the roof. I don’t know if you know this, but something that a lot of music journalists like to do is basically fill up a Molotov cocktail, light it and hand it to an artist to throw shit on someone else. Basically what was happening was people were asking Chris Martin what he thought of us. And you know what, to be honest with you, I don’t think he likes our band, and that’s okay…What it comes down is another recognition of a reality and of a truth. The fact of what they were doing is somehow they figured out that he wouldn’t like us, so they would ask him about us and he would talk about how he didn’t like us. The music media loves negativity, the media at large loves negativity, so what they would be able to do is capture someone talking shit and print it, and it would make for great fodder. But after a while, he was like, “Fuck, these guys are playing me.” So when someone got him on the record and were ready to start lining him up to talk shit about Nickelback, and they were going to get him to eviscerate us, he had figured it out and he went on the record and said, “You know what? I think they’re great and that’s my final word.” What he did was take control of his narrative, which was, “I don’t want to talk shit just to sell you guys papers. I’m not going to get played like that anymore.” Once he said that, it was amazing. That whole thread of the commentary of “Chris Martin hates Nickelback,” gone. Then he could talk about his own band again, which is the whole point of doing interviews in the first place. They don’t want to talk about us, they don’t want to talk about any other bands, they want to talk about Coldplay, of course, that’s what the point is. I think he figured it out, and if he likes our band or doesn’t like our band, that’s okay. I’m a huge fan of Coldplay, I’m a huge fan of Chris Martin, I think they’re all awesome musicians. We’ve met those guys and they were as nice as could be to us. I kind of read between the lines sometimes, I get it wrong, sometimes I read too much into situations, but in this case I could see that Chris Martin was getting operated by the media and he figured it out and shut it down.
Another thing unique about Nickelback is that the music is so famous, yet very little is known about the members. What do you wish more people knew about you, Mike?
M: I wish people knew less about me (laughs). The amount that people know about me already is unnerving and it isn’t much. I’m not particularly interested in being famous or recognized or known or understood by a bunch of strangers. It is not something I really wish for.
Do you have any hobbies, side-projects or interests besides the band that you wouldn’t mind people knowing about?
M: I do all kinds of things, I want to just support things. I do CrossFit, the first rule of CrossFit is we only talk about CrossFit. There’s that, I love Gracie Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I love that. I love being an animal rights activist, I love Sea Shepherd [Conservation Society], I love PETA, I love being a vegetarian, there you go.
Asking a local question of sorts, do you have a favorite spot in New York City that you like to spend time at before or after a show?
M: I sadly haven’t spent enough time in New York City at all. I do like the Meatpacking District a lot. That’s where I feel really good. I’ve been turned on to some restaurants down there by some friends, who may own them (laughs), but there’s just some awesome places down there to eat. It’s a really vibrant feeling, it seems like there are a lot of new ideas down there, and that’s what I really like.
Finally, Mike, any last words for the kids?
M: I think we all as people have to find out where we want to be and what we want to do to be happy, because you can go through your life hating it and complaining it. But sooner or later, and sadly it’s probably sooner, these are going to be “the good old days.” So let’s remember these days in the future, not bitterly complaining about everything being shitty, but actually enjoying it. This is going to be “the good old days” real quick.
Check out some of Nickelback’s latest music videos here:
-by Darren Paltrowitz
