Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year, you've no doubt heard Nickelback's massive crossover hit "How You Remind Me," which--with its multiple hooks, massive shoutalong chorus, and earnest, gravelly vocals--broke all sorts of airplay records at modern rock, mainstream rock, and top 40 radio. But there's plenty more meat-and-potatoes rock on the Canadian band's multiplatinum album Silver Side Up, like their two other fist-pumping, radio-ready single, "Too Bad" and "Never Again"--the type that appeals to classic rock diehards and prepubescent nu-metalheads alike.
Nickelback's Chad Kroeger (vocals/guitar) and Ryan Peake (lead guitar) recently stopped by LAUNCH's L.A. studio to speak with LAUNCH's own Neal Weiss about how much has changed for them since their humble beginnings in Vancouver, Canada, when they had to finance their own records and tour six to a van in the middle of winter. Due to their hectic touring and promotional schedule, they were a little groggy and admitted that they'd rather be lying on a beach than sitting in front of LAUNCH's cameras, but they still came across as the all-around nice small-town boys that they are. Here's how it went:

LAUNCH: First of all, what are the obvious differences between Silver Side Up and your last album, The State?

CHAD: Well, the album covers are different.

RYAN: I would have to say that lyrically, it's more direct, not as metaphoric and cryptic as the last one. It's definitely laid out on the table, where you can tell what we're talking about.

CHAD: I just like the simple fact that this was the first record we got to spend somebody else's money on. The last record, we scrounged up $30,000 of our own money and essentially just sold it to Roadrunner. With this one, we got a nice big budget, got to bring some good people on the record, and take our time. Everything that went on tape was exactly how we wanted it to sound

LAUNCH: So you achieved all your goals in the studio?

RYAN: I think 93 percent of it, I have to say yes.

CHAD: I'd say that on five of the songs, we completely surpassed everything we were hoping for.

RYAN: That's really nice, when sometimes it's the unassuming song you've had in your pocket for a long time, and you bring it out and it's like, "Jeez, that sonically came out real well!" And it becomes one of your favorite songs on the album.

LAUNCH: Were there any specific moments in the studio that surprised you a little bit?

CHAD: Every day at 1 o'clock when sushi showed up, that was kind of fun!

RYAN: I don't know if this surprised us, but something we were really looking forward to was the fact that we worked with Randy Staub mixing, and we wanted him, and we were actually losing him--he was slipping away to P.O.D., he was busy working with them. Damn you, P.O.D! No, you're fantastic. Anyway, he had a window to work with and it actually correlated with us--he lives in Vancouver. We let him mix, and he did it and just cranked it. And it was like, "Oh my God!" We thought we had some good source sounds, but he just took it to an absolute other level. That's why we wanted him, and mission accomplished. Not many bands can say, "I wanted this, and I got this." We really got that, plus more.

LAUNCH: How would you describe your music?

CHAD: We're rock 'n' roll, straight down the pipe. We're not alternative rock or grunge or whatever, or post-this...we're rock 'n' roll. Probably like half of our songs could have been written in the '70s, and we would have fit nicely on a CCR bill--if we toned it down a little bit.

RYAN: We try not to come across with any fake premise that we're trying to follow trends or fit an image. If you can follow trends, that's fine, there's a lot of bands that have emerged from that. But when we go out onstage modestly dressed, and just do what we do, we try to let the songs speak for themselves with good songwriting.

CHAD: People aren't stupid--especially kids, and those are the people buying our records. We don't wear a ton of jewelry and eye makeup or glittery clothes or any of that bullsh-t. We go onstage with what we wear all the time, and if that just happens to be a cowboy hat and a T-shirt and a pair of jeans...if that's what you're wearing that day then that's what you go onstage wearing, it's not that big of a deal. I love the fact that we've always been rock 'n' roll, and we'll always be rock 'n' roll. And I don't care if this trend dies or this one pops up. Because when we started we weren't what everybody wanted to hear, and it just turns out that right now it is what everybody wants to hear. We're sort of enjoying the ride, and now that and everybody knows who we are, we're going to try to keep that ride going for as long as we possibly can.

LAUNCH: Do you have to fight off comparisons to Creed and Pearl Jam?

CHAD: Not so much. It takes all of about 30 seconds to realize that we don't sound anything like Creed. Yeah, they're a rock band, we're a rock band, so if you're a jazz fan, yeah, you're going to lump us together. But if you're a rock fan, then you can pretty quickly tell the difference, it's pretty evident. As for Pearl Jam, I don't think they're a rock band anymore. I don't think they even know what they are. They made a couple great albums, though, gotta hand that to them--but I definitely loved Pearl Jam when they were a rock band. That was definitely something I loved about Pearl Jam, or any rock band, for that matter. Because that's definitely what we are.

LAUNCH: What do you think of other music in the charts right now?

RYAN: I never think of it, to tell you the truth. Someone says, "You have the number one rock album in the country," but I still don't really think of that.

CHAD: We thought about it when we were selling 5,000 copies of our record a week last year, when all we wanted to do was start selling 150,000 records a week, right. And now that we're doing it, we don't even think about it, all we ever think about is time off! [laughs] I think we'd almost give up one week's sales for one week off. Give up 100,000 records just to go to Hawaii.

LAUNCH: So you've been working pretty hard, huh?

CHAD: Everybody thinks that we get drunk every night, we get stoned every night, we get blowjobs from supermodels every night, all we do is sign autographs and sleep all day.

RYAN: That we're doing exactly what we want to do.

CHAD: Well, you couldn't be farther from the f--king truth. If I had time to be getting a blowjob, I'd be happy. Literally, if I get 15 minutes off, I'm happy--I've got my head on a pillow and I'm dreaming about a beach somewhere.

RYAN: It's that double-edged sword thing, where you want a career and you want to be able to do exactly what you want to do, which is great. If you can localize that to one nation, like the States...if we could tour effectively and hit every secondary market in about four weeks, then come home and probably sit for like two months waiting, and then, "OK, they want to see us again," and go again...but now that we're getting exposed to Europe, Australia, Japan, all of North America, we never have that time. A lot of people have their weekends off, or at least one day of their weekends off, and that's nice; the thing is we never get the freedom, we never always get that guaranteed day off. And if I want some time off, I got three other guys to worry about, so it doesn't always work. So it's not as much freedom as you might think. But, in the same breath, it's nice to be working and it's nice that people want to hear our stuff, and we're very happy with this.

CHAD: We could have worse things to bitch about.

RYAN: That's what we're saying: As many sh-tty things that come with the business, we look back and remember we were in a van four years ago, driving through the snow, six of us jammed in there, no sleep. This is OK, this is all right.

CHAD: I'm sure there bands out there sitting there going, Oh sh-t, it must be rough, your shows are all selling out, you're in the top 5 selling albums, you're breaking records with your single left, right, and center." There are worse things to bitch about, for sure.

LAUNCH: Yeah, you could have my job!

CHAD: Ask me something nobody else has asked me.

LAUNCH: I'll try. Why do you think people connected so much with "How You Remind Me"?

CHAD: Primary, secondary, and tertiary hooks! [laughs] I just think that along with the melody that seems to stick in people's heads, it's a topic a lot of people can relate to. It's like, "Hey, I just got really screwed over in a relationship," and that's definitely something that 90 percent of us can relate to. Any time somebody is singing you a song on the radio, they're telling your story--there's instant identification there. It's just sort of like, "I know what he's talking about."

RYAN: It's like the storyline is an empowering story. It's not like, "Oh, my heart's been crushed and I'm weak by this thing." It's like, anthemic; people go absolutely wild, and they sing it at the top of their lungs, and we've never had that reaction to any of the songs we make. It's just a buildup of energy at the end.

LAUNCH: Chad, was it difficult for expose yourself, so to speak, with such personal lyrics?

CHAD: Not really. It wasn't really scary to be more direct with the lyrics, because people don't know which ones are stories and which ones are autobiographical. And by hiding by that, it's not really that scary for me.

LAUNCH: On this album, did you come up with any lyrics that surprised you?

CHAD: No. In fact, I think I'm going to go even deeper on the next one.

RYAN: "Too Bad" surprised me. When Chad came up with that, it surprised me. And as I said before, the way our lyrics match with the mood of the music, I can step back and look at that and feel pretty proud, because it comes across very well.

LAUNCH: Chad, tell me about "Too Bad," your second single.

CHAD: That song sort of touches on the topic that my mother and father split up when I was 3, and I never developed a good relationship with my father until I was in my teens. So anybody who knows what's that's like...I mean, moms are great, but it doesn't matter what you do, your mom thinks you're amazing. Whereas your dad, that's the one you need there to help you with all kinds of stuff: first car, how to fix your bike, what to say to a girl on a date...

RYAN: Or what not to say to a girl on a first date!

CHAD: Or how to hit a baseball...just a million things that dads are good for. Guy stuff. You miss that when you don't have it. And that's what that song's about.

LAUNCH: Going back to "How You Remind Me," at what point did you know you had a great song on your hands?

CHAD: I knew when I was at home writing it, because I phoned Ryan and played it to him over the phone and then I brought in all the pieces, and Ryan said, "Don't finish the line the first time, and just say, 'This is how you remind me,' and then we'll just go into it and go into the chorus." And once we had this on tape we knew it was good, we knew we had a good song; as a writer, if the song doesn't get stuck in your head then it's not going to get stuck in anybody else's head either. So when we left the studio with a little disc in our little hot hands, even the label was ecstatic about it. But nobody knew it was going to do what it was going to do as fast as it did or go as high as it did.

RYAN: You can't always judge the public like that. You can always pick, "This is what I think will be single-worthy," but you can never know if somebody's going to connect with a song that quickly, that huge demographic. We talked to the radio stations and they said 12-year-old girls were phoning, construction workers were phoning, moms were phoning...Chad, did you have moms in mind when you were writing this?

CHAD: No.

RYAN: Don't lie to me.

CHAD: The last station out of every single mainstream active modern rock radio station, every station in America, was playing it--except one station in Boston, and there an extreme station and they play nothing but heavy, heavy music. Finally, it had already been sitting at number one in all the formats, and finally they added it; they were like, "OK, fine, fine, we'll play the song. Our listeners are going to hate it, because they love Slipknot, but fine." A week later, it was number one.

LAUNCH: "How You Remind Me" broke a lot of airplay records. Did you get sick of the song at all?

CHAD: Sick of the song? No. Our challenge is to try to recreate it the way everyone is hearing it on the radio, and trying to play it that well every single night--that's when the challenge comes in. We've got tons of songs where I can just belt my way through it, but the melody of this one's got 90 different notes in it, and if I'm not hitting all of them, the audience can be a little judgmental, so I've got to hit them all.

LAUNCH: Have you noticed that your audience has changed at all?

CHAD: Yes. Absolutely. It used to be like 60 or 70 percent male, 30 percent female, and now it's moved to like a 50/50. Before long, we're going to move into a 75 percent female, 25 percent male. Because, for as many guys who love the songs, more women have good credit, so they're buying the tickets first with the credit cards.

LAUNCH: Yeah, your job really sucks, all right. Seventy-five percent female?

CHAD: Seventy-five percent that we don't get to talk to, because the second we're done, we do a meet-and-greet with the label, then we're signing autographs, then straight on to the bus, and we're off to the next gig. We don't get time to shower, dude!

LAUNCH: You guys have spent a lot of time opening for bands. What have you learned on the road?

CHAD: We have an extremely strict rule with everybody who's employed with Nickelback: If I ever hear any of our crew members so much as yell at a local crew person or an opening band, they're fired. And that doesn't mean they go home on a plane--that means they get a bus ticket. We will not tolerate anybody giving Nickelback a bad name. Because so many times a band would roll through town, and the band's actually nice guys, but nobody ever gets to meet them, all they ever get to meet are the crew guys. And they make an opinion based on the fact some guy that always dreamed about being in a band, but could never make it and who is now so jaded by the business and is now just tuning the band's guitars, is just an absolute son of a bitch to everybody. Our motto is literally "Kill them with kindness," always.

RYAN: It's like an unspoken rule amongst us, and our crew has been fantastic that way. It sounds kind of stupid, but our situation is more like a family situation: We've all been together for quite a while. They know what is expected from us, and vice versa. So it works out really well, and you never get those horror stories like, "I heard about those Nickelback a--holes." That's not typically our nature; that's not the way to be conducting business as far as I'm concerned.

CHAD: We've all been screamed at by some guy who is a drum tech who's never been on tour or on the road or onstage, never recorded an album, never signed a record deal, never done all the things it takes to make it. And this guy's screaming at us, and there's nothing we can do except take it. I'd love to name some names right now...

RYAN: I think we have all tried to get an autograph by some major artist early in your career or your life where you idolize somebody, and then somebody pisses on you. So that's another thing we're very aware of.

CHAD: I think 3 Doors Down has a similar motto, too--you know, they're all super-nice guys, and all their crew members are such nice guys. They're hicks, we're hicks--I think that's why we get along so well, because we're all from small towns. There's that small-town sort of mentality there.

LAUNCH: What are some of the positive things about being on the road?

RYAN: What makes it completely worth it is going onstage and playing to people that are louder than your amps. That's what makes it really cool, when the audience is just overpowering.

CHAD: Those nights when you're literally trying not to stand and look like a pansy and cover your ears, because it's so loud when the crowd screams!

RYAN: Chad will be trying to kick the grin off my face. I'll be going, "This is crazy!" That's definitely the best part of it all. And we're a very live band, we get a point across live. If you like our CD, great, but come see us live. You'll get the other piece when you come to the show--hopefully you'll get it. I'd like to say 99 to 100 percent of people get it by the time they leave.

CHAD: You put it together, and it puts magic to work.

LAUNCH: Tell me, individually, about an album that was magic for you--an album that changed your life.

RYAN: Outskirts by Blue Rodeo, I have to say. That's sit-down-play-the-song-sing-it-have-a-harmony. Have two guys do it--two guitars, two voices. And just amazing songs that make you want to play them again. I love playing music, and the songwriting is just so fantastic, that's what makes you want to write fantastic songs. They are one of my absolute favorite bands.

CHAD: I'm going to say a band called Big Wreck; their first CD was called In Loving Memory Of... and all the guys graduated from Berklee [College Of Music]. Actually, the lead guitar player and singer, Ian Thornley, played slide guitar on the last song on our album, "Good Times Gone." I absolutely idolized those guys, I just thought they were fantastic. So that would definitely be an album that changed my life, because I've listened to that a ton. If you can wear a CD out, that would be one that would have some tread marks in it, for sure.

RYAN: I'd also like to say either The Dream Of The Blue Turtles or Nothing Like The Sun, by Sting--great albums. They just kind of take you out of one section and pull you into something else. You've got to listen to different stuff. If you listen to a Nickelback album, and go back and listen to these--you'll probably dig them like crazy. Take it for what it's worth, but they totally open your eyes.

LAUNCH: I want to ask you about Canada...Is there a sense of national pride, being Canadian?

RYAN: For me there is.

CHAD: All the feedback we're getting from Canada, it feels great, it just feels like everybody is really proud of us. We won a Juno Award in Canada, and Chart magazine named us artist of the year.

RYAN: It's cool when the public in Canada are fans. It's like, when a band in the States does well outside of Canada, it's like, OK, that's what supposed to happen. The U.S. is the biggest market. But when a band from Canada gets out and does well, Canada is like, "Those guys, they're ours!" And that feels good. So definitely, we're very proud of Canada. But you have to be careful about what degree of flag-waving you do, because when you come down here, Americans don't really want to see, "Hey, we're from Canada, rah rah!" Just like Canadians don't want to see Americans waving flags up there. That's understandable. But we're definitely proud of the support we're getting.

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