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Post Info TOPIC: Chad Kroeger: "the dude is my hero"
twain2country


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Chad Kroeger: "the dude is my hero"
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Nickelback's Chad Kroeger laments -- with tongue firmly in cheek -- that "I have to spend a little more time in the studio than the other guys. A little bit."

That's what comes with being the chief songwriter, cook and bottle-washer for the Canadian rock quartet, which has sold more than 27 million albums worldwide since 1996. And you can bet there was a bit of pressure on those studio sessions for Nickelback's new album, "Dark Horse" (due Nov. 18 on Roadrunner Records), especially following the phenomenal success of 2005's "All the Right Reasons."

That set sold 10 million copies worldwide and spent a staggering 110 consecutive weeks in the top 30 of the Billboard 200 as part of a 156-week total run on chart. The intimidating presence of Mutt Lange as co-producer -- "The dude is my hero," Kroeger tells Billboard in his first interview about the project -- only upped the stakes. But Kroeger and company came through unbowed and feel confident that "Dark Horse" will continue to ride the winning streak Nickelback has enjoyed for the past dozen years.


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"Dark Horse" is an interesting title for a band that's been as successful as Nickelback. Where did it come from?


Chad Kroeger: Oh, I think we'll always be the dark horse. We never feel like we'll ever be done trying to prove ourselves, to ourselves and to the people who like our music. The minute you fall into complacency, it's going to reflect in the music. Too many times I've heard records from bands who were obviously, like, "Well, we're at least gonna do half as well as we did on our last record. At least we can count on that." You really have to keep that initial hunger that made some of your first best songs your first best songs. You have to keep that fire in the belly.

So what kind of pressure did you feel in making "Dark Horse?"

Well, with ("All the Right Reasons") there's a mountain sitting behind us. The bar has been raised so ridiculously high. We don't get to just rest on our laurels. We don't get to just sit back and say, "Okay, now we can put out whatever we want." But I think it's important to feel that pressure with every single record you put out -- otherwise you're not gonna be on your toes, and the level the songs need to be at won't be there.

Did you have a particular creative goal or mission going into this?

Well, just working with Mutt was really cool. We always said that the only way we'd let someone else come in and start steering the ship was if it was gonna be the one and only Mutt Lange, so when he expressed interest in it, it was a dream come true. To be able to get into a room with him and just watch the way he works, it was a great learning experience.

You're so used to steering Nickelback yourself; did you and Mutt butt heads at all during the sessions?

(Laughs) A lot of people are asking that. It's very funny. But, no, not a lot -- really. I think Mutt was coming into a situation where he knew Nickelback fans were happy with everything we'd been putting out so far. He didn't really want to change the band too much; he just wanted to bring in a slightly different perspective and a slightly different influence. It definitely still sounds like Nickelback, but you're definitely going to hear a couple different flavors. Anyone who's familiar with Nickelback will be able to go, "Okay, this is definitely Nickelback, and this is definitely Mutt..."

Something like "Something in Your Mouth" not withstanding, there seems to be a very upbeat and almost romantic kind of tone to this album. What accounts for that?
That's very insightful. Everybody's healthy and everybody's happy. We definitely feel like there's not a whole lot of cares in the world right now. I think we're all under the same feeling that we're gonna continue to do this until it's no longer fun, and the minute this starts to feel like work we'll just go and do something else. We just want to stay in this and keep making music as long as we possibly can, as long as it feels the same way.

How did "Gotta Be Somebody," the first single, come about?

I had the chorus, and we recorded it, actually, when Mutt went home to go spend some time with his son. Before he came back I played him this chorus over the phone, and he was like, "Oh, I want to get working on that song as soon as we get back to the studio!" The hardest thing was, honestly the harmonies in the chorus. We debated about those for what must've been three or four days straight, moving the harmonies up, down, just trying absolutely everything to make it as impactful as possible.

You're not going on the road for "Dark Horse" until February. Why the wait?
We've been bitten too many times by going out too early. I'm always adamant about making sure there's at least a true rock song from the band that's gone to radio, just to give a more diverse selection of music for people to listen to. We've been consulting with some people; I'm interested to see someone else's take on what this band could look like live, and we've had some real interesting stuff come back. I think we're gonna try some stuff that, believe it or not, no one has ever done live before -- that I'm not telling you about, so don't even ask (laughs).

Chris Martin of Coldplay recently gave you some props in a British radio interview. Were you surprised?

We were, and that was very, very flattering. We're big Coldplay fans; we think they're an amazing band, and that's somewhere we would've always viewed as an unlikely place to see nice comments from. So it was very well-received.

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/featu..._id=1003877775

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2ndAmendment


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Hero?  Well I hope rock music is happy to have their master guru back. bleh

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twain2country


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Rock fans will get their wish at long last.

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twainee


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Why didn't AC/DC use Mutt on their new album??

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twain2country


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"Mutt" Lange Returns as Producer of Nickelback's New Album

Robert "Mutt" Lange, whose marriage to Shania Twain ended earlier this year, has gotten back to work as the producer for Nickelback's new album. The band will release Dark Horse on Nov. 18 on Roadrunner Records. The album was recorded both in Lange's home studio in Switzerland, as well as Vancouver, Canada, where Nickelback's Chad Kroeger has a studio. Nickelback's 2005 album, All the Right Reasons, sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. When Nickelback performed at Nashville's Sommet Center in 2007, they included a cover of Joe Nichols' "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off" as an encore.

http://www.cmt.com/news/news-in-brief/1597996/mutt-lange-returns-as-producer-of-nickelbacks-new-album.jhtml


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2ndAmendment


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Joe Nichols cover eh?

What are they gonna go country too, lol?

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kelc317


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twainee wrote:

Why didn't AC/DC use Mutt on their new album??


i was wondering the same thing to



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twain2country


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twainee wrote:

Why didn't AC/DC use Mutt on their new album??


No idea, maybe they wanted to use a different producer for a change.


-- Edited by twain2country at 17:02, 2008-10-28

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kelc317


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twain2country wrote:

 

twainee wrote:

Why didn't AC/DC use Mutt on their new album??


No idea, maybe they wanted to use a different producer for a change.


-- Edited by twain2country at 17:02, 2008-10-28

 


did mutt do all there other albums?

 



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2ndAmendment


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There's a few albums by AC/DC not produced by Mutt. Can't tell ya how many though.

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EveryBodyLovesKevy


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I am surprised Nickelback's new Mutt Lange produced album won't even debut #1 next week.
Beyoncee will be #1 with about 550,000
Nickelback is fighting for second with 2 other acts with about 300,000 for the week.
Nickelback is just coming off the biggest album since 2004 so I thought they would sell over 800,000 the first week.
I sure would love Shania's new album to outsell Nickelbacks new album that Mutt produced.
I am sure Shania's first week sales next year will be massive.

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twain2country


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'Dark Horse' same old Nickelback

Andrew Matte, Erin Harde, Courtney Wagner, Christopher Tessmer
The Leader-Post

2 (out of five)

The good thing about Dark Horse, Nickelback's highly anticipated CD, is that there's little change from what fans have come to know. And that's a bad thing too.

There are the traditional grinding groves, swooping melodies and Chad Kroeger's rhyming, nicely timed vocals. Nickelback has done what it does best, combining fuzzy guitars with crisp melodies and adding cheezy choruses and ballads. Hence, they do well with the masses without winning hardcore fans of rock, metal or pop, all genres they crossover onto.

Dark Horse has some polish that its earlier works don't have. Robert "Mutt" Lange -- famous for his work with AC/DC, Def Leppard and his mature decision to cheat on wife Shania Twain -- was called in for this one, and his trademark gloss is on most of the CD.

There are a couple of nifty rockers, head-bobbing jams and some decent musician performances, but none of it keeps us from forgetting it's all rather, well, boring. That won't prevent the CD, which gets released on Tuesday, from being as popular as any Nickelback effort. -- Andrew Matte

http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpo...9-7949b63f810d


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Country gal


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"his mature decision to cheat on wife Shania Twain"furiousfuriousfuriousfurious
i thought this was his most stupid decision but heck,what do i know,these losers rockers kow betterbleh

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2ndAmendment


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Heavy rock n rollers are happy to have Mutt back and to see Shania ousted.

I predict 700,000 first week sales for Shania's next CD and platinum after two weeks. smile.gif Just a random thought.

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twain2country


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Page last updated at 09:39 GMT, Thursday, 20 November 2008


Meet the 'goofiest guys' in rock

by Emma Jones
Entertainment reporter, BBC News


The Canadian band have been together since 1995.

Nickelback's Chad Kroeger and Ryan Peake are seated in a recording studio in Vancouver, Canada, where their latest album, Dark Horse , is being mixed after five months of work.

"Every year we say we are not going to make an album in summer," Kroeger, the lead singer, says wistfully.

"Every year our friends are calling up and saying 'come to the lake', and we're like 'man, are you trying to kill me?'"

"And what do we do?" adds Peake, "we record this album in summer too."

You could find sympathy for the band - unless you know that their history of spending summers cooped up in a studio has so far netted them 30 million album sales worldwide.

Nickelback, who come from Vancouver, have been together since 1995.

As well as Chad Kroeger and Peake, the current line-up includes another Kroeger brother, Mike, and drummer Daniel Adair.

BBC News has had an exclusive play of Dark Horse, their sixth album, produced by Mutt Lange.

The South African has previously worked with Def Leppard, Bryan Adams, AC/DC and his estranged wife Shania Twain, and has a reputation for everything he touches turning to platinum.

That is when the records finally get released - he also has a reputation as a perfectionist.

"This is the fastest record Mutt has ever produced," Kroeger insists.


 When they first talked about doing the video like that, I was like, 'oh no, this is going to be really dumb'.

Chad Kroeger on the band's Rockstar video

"We had a deadline to get the album out this year. We were hustling him the whole time."

Lange's stamp is all over Dark Horse - from the vocal harmonies to the multi-layer guitars. It is the most polished record the band, once described as 'post-grunge ', have put out.

The first single, Gotta Be Somebody, is a traditional Nickelback up-tempo ballad, but much of the album is surprisingly heavy and even in the vein of 80s 'hair metal'.

The opening track, Something In Your Mouth starts off: "Gotta meet the hottie with the million dollar body..."

"Right from the start, Mutt wanted to rock," Kroeger recalls.

"I went to Switzerland to meet him and played him some of my ideas, and he just said, 'Hmmm, I think we want a rocker'. I was like, 'Oh no, those tunes were my A-game. What will I do now?'"

Perhaps the audience is expecting something heavier from Nickelback after the success of their last single, Rockstar.

The last release off their 2005 album, All the Right Reasons, Rockstar is one of the biggest-selling UK singles of 2008 - despite being released at the end of last year.

It never reached number one, but thanks to downloads and featuring in a TV furniture advert, it spent more than 35 weeks on the chart.

It's finally made them household names in the UK - until now, their biggest hit was 2002's How You Remind Me.

"We just had no idea that was going to happen," Peake says.

"But it brought us so many new fans, I think it really connected with people. Before, they may have thought we took ourselves too seriously."

Rockstar's success was in no small measure thanks to the video, featuring Kid Rock, Gene Simmons and ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, but also members of the public mouthing lines like, "Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars, live in hilltop houses and drive fifteen cars".


Kid Rock was one of the many celebrities that starred in Rockstar.

"When they first talked about doing the video like that, I was like, 'Oh no, this is going to be really dumb'", Kroeger laughs.

"But then we really started enjoying it. It definitely showed us how to have a successful video - only be in for six seconds at the end.

"The song does have a certain reality because not everyone wants to be a star, but they have thought about having all those things in their life.

"We had so many other lines for that song," he adds.

"We were killing ourselves laughing about what we could put in, but we knew we couldn't release it."

With the band scheduled to tour the UK in May 2009, after signing a deal with events company Live Nation, can fans expect any rock star behaviour off Nickelback?

"I know someone who paid a roadie to throw their cellphone out of a hotel window," Peake admits, slightly sheepishly, "He just wanted to know what it felt like."

No wonder they describe themselves as "four of the most normal, goofiest guys around", and this lack of pretension, coupled with power ballads and Chad Kroeger's long blond hair, has often consigned them to "chick rock" status.

But with bands like Guns 'n' Roses and AC/DC back on the public radar and selling millions of albums, Nickelback may benefit.

Plus, the Times newspaper recently published an article suggesting that rock music traditionally sells better during an economic downturn.

"Sales of alcohol and loud music will always go up when people are depressed," shrugs Kroeger, while his bandmate adds: "It's always a cycle with music.

"Rap was huge for a while, and it will be again. You're only as good as your last album. But yeah, rock is back and that's good news.

"Does that mean we're cool now?" Kroeger asks, with a laugh.

Dark Horse is on release in the UK now.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7737175.stm




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twain2country


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Mutt is credited as co-writer on songs: 1, 4, 7, 8 and 11.

Dark Horse lyrics:

http://www.nickelback-forum.com/view...b85a2f29d377fb

-- Edited by twain2country at 14:48, 2008-11-21

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