Nickelback On Being A Musician Now Vs. The Early Days

[Music] yeah it's your show do whatever you want at no point in time did we uh sort of sit down and say we should expand our Sonic scope I think that's the more your Smorgasbord style of riding though like do a couple heavy and then you want to do something a little softer and then you do have that country streak in you so yeah but I think that there's just so much of everything in all of us musically that it's really it's never a conscious effort like we we're gonna write one of these today I'll be playing something it's like that and whatever that is stylistically we'll turn into well that's kind of neat we could probably just do something depending we can work on this for a little bit and you just see where it goes and you travel down that Avenue for a little while and you try to decide quickly if this is something worth working on or are we just wasting our time and have we you know gone down an Avenue that we're that we we don't need to pursue and maybe we should try working on something else but you got to give you got to give everything you know a decent amount of time you know and then if lyrically something just happens to kind of come along and melodically all of a sudden there's another piece and another piece of the puzzle that starts coming together you know if that's me just doing it by myself then I'll bring it to the guys they'll say what what about this little nugget that's here this and it could be just just maybe like a line or just something you know you know the guys will be like I feel like we've done this thing enough let's try something different okay or sometimes they're like that's interesting let's pursue this a little bit um it rarely is there an effort where we all sit sit back like mad scientists and just sort of go hmm you know what we should cook now it's like the only time we did that a little bit was the last album I don't know it was just like all rock I think it's like the first time that's ever happened if something is so unbalanced in one area then that that'll be a time actually where we will go all right we need something I won't know what it is but it'll just be you know so general just to say let's go with something just a little bit more moronic and a little less aggressive for this last song I don't see that I don't ever actually see that happening um but it's uh but I'm a fan and I love to I love to Dabble rock star so that's pretty much a country song photograph pretty much country soil especially in this day and age you know when we've got these you know you've got these artists that are that are you know this is the Jason Aldean and you know that's a lot of those Tunes those are rock songs you know you listen to like some of the stuff from Brothers Osborne you know I've said before some of those students are there just like those are rock songs these are these are straight down the pipe you know 20 years ago would never ever see the light of day on country radio but now the landscape has changed you know and I like it when the lines get you know blurred a little bit and that's probably why we're you know venturing so far as to take Brantley Gilbert on tour with us because we we want to try different things and we want to move in different directions he can two-step I can actually two-step can you two-step I can't come here all right so we're gonna go it's just like this okay we're gonna be counting it first and it's just going to go one and then a two like a quick one like that and back one two back one two back one two back one two back boom look at one of these wax stay there come across the stomach I'm gonna grab you here one of those back to here and Wham and I got you and then We're Off to the Races there you go because when you grow up in a small town if you can't do that you're gonna be lonely my mother taught me that at a very early age she's like do you want to be one of the kids that's out there having fun with the other kids or do you want to be standing on the wall I'm like I want to have fun with the other kids she's like come here my mother's a dance teacher and so she's like that's a two-step I get to try to line dance real quick how much time you got yeah he doesn't have a country streak in the middle like in the studio I've relinquished a lot of control I used to be uh a little more no I know how this song is supposed to sound and I know the direction I want this to go and I just need this to be recorded and that's all and I was a little more guarded and less open to suggestions I felt that things started getting a little stale and the more I relinquished that control and just trusted in my band members the more interesting things got the more I was willing to accept different ideas and it just became far more collaborative and and I enjoyed it more like what period like all our reasons was it mutling more uh probably with my probably Dark Horse all the right reasons I was still a little pretty yeah it's like I know what I want I know I definitely know what I want this to sound like and I just we just need to get you know just follow me guys just follow me here just stay with me and that must have been incredibly frustrating for my band members whatever when it came to the studio uh you know to you know be sitting there with someone who's just like I've got this just let me let me get what's in here down first and then well you also backed up by writing number one single so it's not like you're doubting the guy as well but mutt was very try everything everyone tries absolutely it's great you open it up it's it's because if I had kept down that path everything's just going to be it's just like chat chat chat chat and it's not gonna be then it's just gonna all start sounding the same and and I didn't want that I I wanted to think that I was at least clever enough to avoid that trap to be like well how am I gonna how am I gonna do that it's like well you're gonna have to give up some control you're gonna have to start allowing other people like what about this what about this and entertain those ideas and go down those Avenues as well and try it what's going to happen you're gonna waste 20 minutes who cares what's best gonna happen somebody's gonna come up with a really great idea or lead you to the path of a great idea that you wouldn't have come up with yourself and that's better than anything don't be too precious with anything I've had to teach this to I think Mike especially my brother the bass player it's like just because you came up with a part don't have to fight so aggressively to hold on to that idea for the song just because you came up with it better is always better and you have to be willing to say that at any point in time it doesn't matter what you came up with better is always better because the betterment of the song is the goal we're trying to create something in here that's going to give us the feels that involuntary emotional response that you might be able to get generate from somebody else we're trying to give someone else the feels so if we can give ourselves the feels in here there's a good chance we can give that to somebody else and that's what we're trying to do we're trying to create something special to to not just for ourselves but for for anybody else out there that might want to watch onto it a song called guardian angel and honestly it's uh it's pretty good it was uh I spoke about several different things within the song I talked about the planet and what's going on with the climate I talked about racism I talked about all these different things in each one of the verses it's pretty good song did you ever record it no I never have but uh I played it once in an interview I picked up a guitar and I started strumming it I think it's on the Queue that we did it in Toronto and I just kind of like and I've started spitting out these lines and that one's been in the back pocket well since I was 16 so it's hard to call this a career because I just think it was you know we're getting away with this yeah yeah exactly it's like we're fooling someone you know like we got just good enough at our instruments to be able to to to create something and now we have somehow convinced the world that we know what we're doing and we just had no idea what we're doing true truthfully but like but somehow we get there but throughout the you know the the career anytime lyrically melodically sonically just come up with a little idea every little piece this verse idea this course idea this you know two in the morning you know into your phone kind of thing it's all archives you're just doing that on the plane you're listening yeah he was just like he had the guitar he's trying to figure out what he actually hummed into it it's cool to see that process it's uh it's very weird um but uh the vault is is great because you'll put you'll tuck something away for a rainy day and it's so it's really cool when you come across something because you can't remember your mindset when you did it you can't remember what you were thinking of or the vibe you were thinking of but when you hear something back or when you play you know if we've got it on a drive somewhere in a studio somewhere it's just like someone hears something you know the producer turns around and goes what's this I'm like I don't know let's let's mess around with this for a couple of days you know and then away we go the other little piece of advice that uh that might dropped was uh because he dropped the never be too precious um with an idea and the other one was um when the faucet's on pay attention because someday that faucet's gonna get turned off whether you like it or not and so if you've got all this stuff stored up while you're just spitting Everything lyrics and Melodies and all the stuff and you're being very creative at that stage of your life you will look back on that and be very thankful and it's like like I said not sooner or later that tap will get shut off I think when it comes to listening to songs from back in the day there's there's a the perfectionist side of me that listens to a lot of things because we just simply didn't have the money we didn't have the funds so if something was recorded independently I'd be like oh this part could have been so much cooler if we just could have had the time and we didn't have to use the phrase good enough because using the phrase good enough in the studio drives me nuts good enough well if it's just good enough why are we recording it let's make it great let's make this you know make this piece very special not enough money back then all the time it's just it's like you know you're spending you know 1500 bucks a day for the studio you're spending 300 for the engineer like you're recording on two inch tape and each one of those was 400 like it's just like these costs you know for a bunch of guys who are just working these nine to five jobs and and you know and I'm running a heavy level of BS convincing everybody these songs are great and we need to just keep digging this hole you know and at no point in time does anyone say yeah I think you should put down the shovel you know it's uh it's it's frustrating sometimes to listen back and just be like oh if we just had taken just a little more time on this so that's just some frustration and sometimes a little bit of embarrassment because I'll know what the lines are that I'm saying but they're so heavily Laden in metaphor because I'm afraid to actually say what I'm really feeling because I don't want to be judged at that point in time and I would say that you know cracking the code was when I just shed that skin and I wasn't afraid to say anything anymore even at the cost of like having your mother or father go really hey just decided to air some family laundry on a record wow thanks for that um and to that degree where it's just like if it affects you and you know no one's safe as a songwriter it's just like it's it's probably just going to come out there somehow so like if I wrote a song about domestic violence like I did on Silver side out and songs called Never Again everyone thinks that my dad beat my mother it's not the case but I don't get to sit there in the car or in their bedroom or wherever you know while wherever they are while they're sitting there formulating an opinion about what they think my father is so it's yeah sometimes it gets a little heavy but all for the sake of art huh yeah yeah never thought about that yeah the old man went through a phase there where he was just saying well everyone thinks that I beat your mother I'm like I'm sorry Dad but you know some of it some of it's not you know some of it is storytelling and some of it's you know autobiographic it seems terrifying to actually expose yourself like to actually make that step reach in here rip a part of yourself out and just show it to the entire world and let the keyboard Warriors go to town um but that's when you start you know doing your best work that's when songs start getting you know because when things are like guttural and like then you can feel that emotion you just start just here it comes the listener can feel that it's like oh this is this is good and not only that huh he's telling my story right now you know that's when you start making those kinds of connections instead of someone sitting back on Jesus I wonder what the hell this song's about I'd say massive a massive is the word that came to mind too but just doing the promo for this this album I mean five years ago we did the last album the promo go into people's houses influencers houses to do Tick Tock videos and stuff like even five years ago that wasn't a thing no where it's like we just came out of the crypt after five years and we're like don't even know what world we're in sometimes it's a little different but it's fun you know it's cool like you just kind of roll with it it's a lot of fun too to get to show the world that we don't take ourselves seriously you know you've got all these pictures of the band and we're doing this you know the metal pose or this that or whatever and then you've got these four supposed adults that are just laughing at every fart joke you can imagine like just being those jokes will never get old no that's true uh just being total goofballs you know but everyone's just like wow these Ford losers really take themselves seriously yeah I mean honestly it was it was truly that thing it's like well we're just gonna go back to the same well we're gonna go right back to the same very short list of opening acts and ask all of them hey do you want to come in it's just going to be the same show you know I'm like let's let's do something different let's think outside of the box let's start doing something a little bit different as soon as he came up it was like well this could be this could be cool this could be a good fit I mean because he's not so country that it's it's just two completely different because he's he's country rock he's country with that edge you know he's just got enough Edge where it's like I think we can pull this off I can I think we can pull this off without too many eyebrows raising but I'm also really interested to see how many of our fans are going to sing along to his stuff and how many participants are going to sing along to our stuff um we want to create an experience this could either be the worst decision ever which I I doubt I really don't think it is I think this is I think we got a shot of something this being really really cool foreign I don't want to play has nothing to do with the song it has to do with the difficulty of Performing the song and it's usually stuff that's not a lot of space to breathe you know when I start off a song and it's like uh I'm driving black on black just got my license back I got this feeling and my veins this train is coming off the track I'll ask blood if the devil needs a ride because the angel love my ride ain't hanging out with me tonight yeah and then you get one one and then you've got to do that and then again and now we're going up and it's like here we go and it's like you still write songs like that oh it's dumb it's so dumb Because You Love lyrics so much I love lyrics You Love storytelling loves the challenge of the lyrics and I love getting that Cadence in there where it's just like you know that was the first thing when Mutt worked with us he's like why don't you want to breathe during the song um like I don't know but uh yeah so any anytime I see things that are like oh or if it's stratospheric if I'm like oh I gotta go hit this note for a while that's the only time I look down and go oh this is gonna hurt or songs that we like but doesn't connect with the crowd where it's kind of like crickets like we really really like playing it yeah that doesn't feel good after it's like it's like I finished this off and it was like okay well um I guess I that was my pee break or I should have got a beer maybe hit the merch Booth or something like that yeah that's all because that's that's like the the best joke going because if someone's sitting there and they're watching the show and we can see everything from inside the arena so if I say all right we're gonna play a new one for you guys and you see people start heading up it's like you better stop at the merch Booth if you guys are heading up there right now you know and that kind of stuff so [Music] I was at a birthday party it was in Northern California and there was a thousand people there I mean this is an Eclectic Bunch just all over the map and I and I wind up meeting this gentlemen and uh he was talking about the band and whatnot oh he's here for a Nickelback right on nice to meet you hi but you know what I do for them what do you do for a living He said I'm the uh I'm the warden at San Quentin and he was way too young I was just like and I just thought I thought he was just pulling a line on me and I'm like yeah right and everyone behind him was sort of like oh you're oh oh oh you're actually the warden at Segway I'm like oh wow that's cool and then I started asking a bunch of dumb jail questions and he's like well you know I want to see where a little bit more about Rehabilitation I'm like yeah right but instantly I in the back of my head I'm thinking to myself I'm writing a song I'm writing a song called San Quentin there's that Dewey Cox mode don't you dare do it don't you dare write a song right now Dewey Cox and I'm right in the middle of the conversation I'm just like I stopped resting even I'm just like oh this would be a cool lyric this would be kind of interesting and I'm just sitting there just just jotting down lines in my I've gotten my use from our conversation well you get very German no thank you very much how you've been very useful I feel the same and then you have that riff in the vault right I had the music and one line me screaming can somebody please keep me the hell out of San Quentin and that sat in that shape like that for probably eight to nine months just sitting there just like that and then hide it'd be 11 o'clock at night there's no one around I go to the studio it's my old hay barn and I get up there and crack a beer and I'm like all right let's do this Crank It Up 20 minutes later I got nothing and that was like three times I kept coming back to this and like scream something come come up with something and then I kind of cracked it one day and I started spitting out a couple lines and bass proves there Chris space for our producer he's like oh that's cool why don't we go down that Avenue and I'm like yeah okay there we go now I'm onto something and then once I know the direction of where we're going then it's just you just get in descriptive mode and it's like okay if you know once you know you're Melody and you know thematically where you're going then where you go the lines never made it as a wise man couldn't cut it as a poor man stealing a title living like a blind man I'm sick of sight without a sense of feeling and I had that had come to me on a tour bus somewhere and I was like oh that's that's juicy I'm gonna write that down I wrote that down in this book that I had and then that just got put away for a while and then I got into an argument with my girlfriend I was living with and which is always over nothing pizza toppings and things about a series is that and you just wind up getting an argument over something dumb oh I got frustrated I went downstairs and I turned my PA on and I started saying and then she got the it's not like you to say sorry I was waiting on a different story probably because I rhymed with sorry and this time I'm mistaken for Hannah knew a heart worth breaking and I've been wrong but you know the whole thing but and I'm spitting out all this stuff and I I want it loud enough so she can hear all of it and I'm just giving it to her and I'm gonna take that yeah and uh and then I open up the book and I'm like it's got to be a verse and that's when I did the never made it as wise man and I started off like that and then I kept singing the chorus over again and again and I had enough of it there and I recorded the idea and I went upstairs and I thought she was going to be like oh you think you're funny dude you're gonna I come upstairs and I'm just ready and I've got two in the barrel you know metaphorically ready to fire a couple you know cheap shots at her and she goes what were you what were we playing down there I go I don't know something I was just writing and she goes well it's good and I'm like that's not what I was expecting this is not the reaction I was expecting to get you know I was just waiting for her to just like say something I'm like do you want do you want to pick up where we left off yeah what was that oh that's something I'm working on it's really good but it's funny because I had the skeleton form of it and I went over to I drove over to this is before you could just make a voice note you know an email you know or just text it over to somebody and they could listen to it I got in the car with an acoustic guitar drove over to peeks place and uh I said hey I wanna I wanna play something for you just tell me what you think and I played him how you remind me and he was like he was nodding and he's like huh he's like this is good and from The Loft upstairs where his wife was she's over the rail and going that's a hit that's a hit and she's yelling that like yelling that like when Ryan tells the story it's yeah it's great it's hilarious uh but yeah she was given that one she's like that's the seal of approval right there that's a great song she nailed it yeah she did she really did um and then once we recorded it suddenly because even back then like you burn a CD that goes into a FedEx pack that goes to New York the label hears it and once they heard how you remind me everything changed suddenly it wasn't just Ron our a r guys sitting there suddenly there was a lot of label people that started coming out so like even Dave rather who was in finance at the time and like everybody there was like a lot of people that wanted they wanted us like we want to hear more of the record what's going on here and the excitement started to Bubble Up and then a version of it went to the owner of the label case wessels in Amsterdam and when he heard it all hell broke loose and he was a slave your lives are about to change drastically like I'm gonna get this song played all over the world I like gold [Laughter] yeah and so then like things really changed like it was crazy I remember showing up to pre-production for the tour for the silver Side Up tour and I'd been partying all night long and for some reason everything was I was supposed to meet everybody in the parking lot of the coliseum in Vancouver so I get to the parking lot but we're not even playing the Coliseum we're playing a show in another city in Victoria we're going to do two days of pre-production then the tour was going to start that's it and I show up and I'm like whose crap is this and there were trucks everywhere and buses lined up everywhere I'm like what's all this and he's like those are your tour buses I'm like all those he's like all of them whose trucks for those those are yours there's 60 people standing in the parking lot like who is it's nine o'clock in the morning that's your lighting crew that's your audio crew there's your staging crew there's your that's your pyro Crew That's this this this and I'm like like who's the big guy behind me that's your uh that's your new bodyguard and you don't go anywhere without them I'm like you're kidding me this is all ours he's like oh yeah I'm like where are we playing he goes every Arena on the planet by the way they're all sold out so the song had a little impact on her careers crazy that one is definitely about three of the four band members um growing up in a small town in Hannah and you played your part just fine yeah yeah Daniel's walking around in a hay field in his red shirt trying to pretend like I have memories I'm like I don't know where I was like drunk in the video like I was gonna feel somewhere let's get out of here you're great in that video I do look great it was cool because we hadn't been back to Hannah in a long time it was also sad at the same time to see like you know because in photograph fun talking about like the movie theater being gone and all that sure enough we got there and it was gone and I didn't even know it was gone but I say it in the song which is hilarious our director Nigel dick who's probably shot 20. videos for the band he'd showed up he'd shown up probably two days early and he had started just grabbing all these people from town and just shooting shots of them and I didn't see any of that until I got the first cut of the video and I'm like I I know I know those humans but those two girls the twins that are walking across the street I'm like that's the Griffith sisters um which is very bizarre because they're Brothers they have there's two twin brother two twin boys and two twin girls in the family I'm like and then I see this whole thing coming together and Nigel had this entire image yeah shooting the video for Photograph was really cool for us and then we did uh we played our part in the um in the the gym yeah we're in the gymnasium uh of what was our Junior my junior high school but way back in the day like 50 years before it was the actual high school before we built a new one so it still says Hannah high school and Tufts when we're walking into the building it says Hannah high school so we get in there and I broke into that exact School I think I have 11 counts of break and Enter in my on my criminal record but I say I think I I must have done it half a dozen times is what I say in the song and then my principal Mr Brinton he came out and he you know like all the people that were there when all of it went down like it was crazy and so Canada's MTV much music they had a full camera crew there and like the whole town is watching us play in the gym like there was just like so many people there from my past it was awesome um yeah and like to just watch you know these people getting interviewed and talking about like this idiot right here and how much and I was such a troublemaker God I was a bad kid I can't I would have got if it was an island they would have either drowned me or I'd have been voted off real quick like we got to get rid of this one this one's causing problems what do you listen to what's up what's up actually a new uh there's a song called Mariposa by a band called radiant child it's kind of it's kind of like a Erykah Badu went to Berkeley really coming really like beautiful r b voices female but kind of Jazzy chords but not it's not Jazz it's kind of hip-hop cool yeah it's real good background music kind of thing I'm really into them lately I'm in a huge nostalgic point in my life and so if it's I want to grab something that made me feel a certain way and I want to see if it can do it to me again you know so if I'm in the vehicle and by myself and it starts raining and you know all of a sudden uh all want to put on Depeche Mode you know something that Mike would play like some some really obscure thing that you wouldn't think that I would be listening to you know and Policy of Truth that I love that tune and all of a sudden I start getting the feels and it's working that's what it that that's what I'm kind of into right now is going into like these different parts of my life seeing if I can grab those tunes that would make me feel that way still get that feeling geez I've been kind of doing that lately is that an old guy thing um I don't know it's weird during coven um we got the metrics from I think it was Spotify and the the way that people were consuming music was in that period in that time period people were going to back catalog of all of these bands and they wanted to be transported right back to a certain period in their life and back catalog was being consumed 92 percent more than any new music what do you got what do you think I'm gonna say one of them One's Gonna Be Rush yeah it's Gotta Be rush anything off the moving pictures heavily influenced by Neil pert and I'm a bass player as well so you got to pick one there's a one five you have to do five two okay red barchetta Boom by Rush that's right now you one of my favorite Tunes Of All Times gotta be Harvester of Sorrow off uh and justice for all by Metallica Mr DC by John McLaughlin oh yeah it was heavily influenced by Dennis Chambers if you don't know who he is look him up holy especially in his heyday I grew up on rock drummers and then I just wanted to get even better so I started to get into jazz fusion and there's a whole nother level of musicians up there and uh I can hear it in my solos the influence I played two shows with Dennis Chambers to you bastard yeah really yeah because uh when I did the the last song I did with Santana Dennis Chambers was playing drums yeah and like and I'm also a drummer and so at Dennis Chambers is a beast so like just to just be sitting there I'm just like don't Fanboy don't Fanboy but all you want to do is think remember the time uh I just want to do that okay so now we got three okay I'm gonna do this song can just like get me and he just grabs me um Have a Drink on Me by AC DC if I'm in a bar and I'm in second gear I'm it's straight into five probably without even using the clutch and it's just like here we go that comes on and I have the hardest time not screaming along just like and that is not good for this but uh there you go there's four what do you got oh I was a huge huge bottom fan but what's what would be your face that's hard to say a fave there's a big influence like I had the progressive rock influence but then I think I got a lot of feel from playing along to Led Zeppelin ramble on yeah it's all right not bad it's not my favorite but uh I am it's an awesome song I asked Jason Bonham custard pie CES here we go so in the beginning ramble on and you hear that tapping sound and it's unaccented yeah you notice that it's not even like it's not just is it actual knee slaps so I asked him we were super nice at the end of the bar I asked Jason I said what's the tapping sound because I'm pretty sure I know what it is but confirm it for me and he said my dad grabbed an empty guitar case they put a mic on it and he just started you started tapping unaccented on the top of a an empty acoustic case and that's that cell and then [Music] yeah not saying I don't like that song but wow they're all good okay that's it that's five life that's sexy oh do you mean five each no five in total come on by Alan Holdsworth there stick that in your pipe yeah smoke it

Channel: American Songwriter

Views: 15,290

Keywords: nickelback, music, rock music

Id: KwpkBp749e4

Length: 34min 9sec (2049 seconds)

Published: Mon May 22 2023