Pop-punkers take a break from the rigors of fame
By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer
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| Steve "Stevo32" Jocz, Deryck "Bizzy D" Whibley, Dave "Brownsound" Baksh and Cone McCaslin comprise Sum 41.
Martin Philbey Sum 41 With opening band No Bare Feet 7 p.m. Monday Pipeline Café $20, all ages (877) 750-4400 |
No, really.
Getting flat-out drunk most nights, tripping on LSD in Japan, accepting as many sexual favors as possible from young female fans, and regurgitating 'shrooms on singer Nikka Costa's leg? All treasured memories from the younger, wilder days of a then-newly famous quartet of twentysomething Canadian pop-punkers adjusting to the rigors of American-style stardom, nights out with DMX and Tommy Lee, and the come-ons of TRL-aged groupies.
Sum 41 drummer Steve "Stevo32" Jocz recalled most of it as if it had happened just last year. Which, of course, for the most part, it did.
"We still go out," said Stevo, 21, phoning a couple of hours shy of a Tempe, Ariz., show earlier this month. "But for the last couple of months, we haven't been doing anything that crazy. We go out a lot, but it's not with as much enthusiasm as we had."
A mind is a terrible thing to waste
As Bruce Springsteen once wrote so eloquently about growin' up in his 1973 composition "Growin' Up": "Ooh-ooh, growin' up. Ooh-ooh growin' up." The Boss' simple, emotional idealism rings true today as well, as far as Stevo is concerned.
"That's just getting a little old for us right now," said Stevo, of Sum 41's well-documented past evenings of the wild, the innocent, and the amyl-nitrite shuffle. "The last time we were really into that was when we were in Japan and we did this whole weird hallucinogenic thing. It sort of left us brain-damaged. After that, we were like, 'Let's just take a break for a while.' "
That break lasted the length of a two-month European trek — during which, Stevo insisted, "I didn't even drink once, really" — and was mostly kept in check right up to the week before our chat. The very same week that the band's tour bus entered the New Orleans city limits.
"Last week was, like, sort of like a big party week where we were going out every night and, you know, getting so drunk that you can't remember anything," said Stevo. "But, I mean, that was just like the first time in a long time. And that all had to do with the fact that ... we were in New Orleans and stuff.
"That's just a bad city anyway for stuff like that, 'cause that's, like, the only thing to do. It's like Amsterdam or something. When you're there, that's, like, the touristy thing to do."
Noted, Stevo.
And so, still a month away from Sum 41's first-ever Honolulu show, Stevo was proud to report that the band was, once again, taking leave from all the excess. Lead guitarist Deryck Whibley was back at work writing songs in the rear of the tour bus. Rhythm guitarist Dave Baksh, bassist Cone McCaslin and Stevo were working through a new addiction to a Tiger Woods Playstation2 game and failing miserably.
"Oh, yeah!" said Stevo, oozing sarcasm. "That's rock 'n' roll!"
This is my hometown
Stevo laughed hard when asked to describe the band's hometown of Ajax, Ontario, for the Honolulu unfamiliar.
"It's probably the farthest, most bizarro ... I mean, it couldn't be more different," said Stevo, describing the Toronto suburb. "It's cold seven months of the year, or something like that. That's just one lovely aspect of it. And it has no downtown. Which makes it the only town I know that's like that."
Derek Whibley was the first of the Sum 41 collective to start a band — a hardcore hip-hop trio called Powerful Young Hustlers — at age 11. Quickly finding his one-strip-mall town sadly devoid of Public Enemy-style angst, Whibley went rock with his next group, Casper. Stevo signed up first, and eventually so did classmates Baksh and McCaslin. Once a foursome, the band re-christened itself Sum 41 to honor the day it was formed — the 41st day of summer before its senior year at Exeter High.
Sum 41 recorded some demos and made the rounds of the local club scene. But it was a 10-minute edit of the band's countless home videos documenting its drives around Ajax, blasting pedestrians with Super Soakers and re-enacting favorite movie action sequences that sent a bunch of major labels — all jonesing for the next blink-182 — scrambling north to sign them in 1999.
"It was just us doing 'Jackass'-like stuff, but a little more tame and not as extreme," Stevo said of the video. "We sent that out with our music over it, and two weeks later there were labels coming up every week."
The labels figured they knew just how to woo the band.
"There were big dinners, and stuff like that. You know ... strip clubs," said Stevo. "I mean, they always asked us what we wanted to do. And Toronto's got plenty of good strip clubs. And so we were, like, 'Let's go here! Let's go there!' "
Sum 41 eventually went with Island when one of that label's artist-and-repertoire representatives, for no apparent reason, began jumping on one of the band's on-stage collection of trampolines.
"That's when we were, like, 'Oh, yeah! These guys are awesome!" said Stevo. "And then we went out and partied with 'em and stuff." Additionally, "Everybody we met at the label were really cool ... and seemed like they really wanted to sign us."
An EP "Half Hour Of Power" came first in 2000, with Sum 41's debut CD "All Killer No Filler" hitting record stores the next year. A blink-182-and-you'll-miss-it blast of catchy, sophomoric pop punk, "All Killer" went on to sell more than 3 million copies, upchucking the modern-rock radio hits "Motivation" and "In Too Deep." The CD's highlight — a slap upside the head of Beastie-reminiscent rap and Offspring-like speed guitar called "Fat Lip" — topped Billboard's Modern Rock chart for several weeks.
When Sum 41 began planning an "All Killer" follow-up last year, however, band members were anxious to show some of the musical (if not personal) growth they had gleaned from two years of constant touring. With the band playing better and listening to, in Stevo's words, "heavier music," Sum 41's late-2002 CD "Does This Look Infected?" boasted deeper subject matter than the teenage apathy and angst of "All Killer," and a decidedly heavy-metal lean.
The modern-rock radio hit "Still Waiting" addresses post 9/11 global hate, while current single release "Hell Song" is about a friend who contracted HIV. "My Direction" references recent increases in teen suicide, while "Hooch" slows down an opening speed-metal assault to a warm and fuzzy emo-lite coda. "Infected" still sports moments of pure pop-punk idiocy like "A.N.I.C." — an expletive-laden rant all but eviscerating all-too-easy target Anna Nicole Smith — but suggests overall a band with a lot more than groupie love and Jagermeisters on its mind, musically speaking.
"We just sort of got bored with light-hearted stuff," said Stevo. "I think the songwriting (on 'Infected') is just better. The songs are a little bit more layered better and a little more complex. They're not as predictable as the last record."
The fans that drove sales of "All Killer" to triple platinum haven't been as quick to embrace the more serious Sum 41 of "Infected" — sales after five months are just over a half-million units — but Stevo said the band wasn't worried about fan exodus.
"We figured if we lost any fans because ('Infected') wasn't as poppy as ('All Killer'), we'd gain new fans because it was a little heavier," said Stevo. "And we've noticed the crowds (at shows) becoming a little more diverse ... a little older. So I think it's better that (we're) broadening our appeal to other people."
Crack that whip!
"My favorite band is, like, Devo," confessed Stevo, asked what grooved him of late. "I like stuff that's really, like, kind of not regular."
Anything current?
"Uhhhh ... not really," said Stevo. A closet oldies and country fan, Stevo gave the most recent CD he sat through — Hank Williams III's 2002 release "Lovesick Broke & Driftin'" — a thumbs up, but otherwise called the current music scene "oversaturated with crap."
Given Sum 41's recent experiments in combining pop-punk, metal and a brain, Stevo was asked if the band would consider mixing up its sonic future with splashes of alt country or, uh, emo.
"We're too shallow to go emo," replied Stevo, laughing. "I mean, I don't think I've ever had a girlfriend, let alone been dumped by one."
