Rock legend reveals he suffered a stroke and nearly died during tour as he opens up in tell all film
NEXT October will mark two decades since Nickelback’s runaway album All The Right Reasons was released to global acclaim.
The record, which came three years after their breakthrough track How You Remind Me, spawned hits including Photograph, Far Away and one of my favourite ever songs, Rockstar.
But their commercial success was bittersweet, with the band – made up of brothers Chad and Mike Kroeger, Ryan Peake and Daniel Adair – becoming figures of ridicule off the back of the rising tide of social media.
A new film, Hate To Love: Nickelback, produced by Virgin Radio’s Ben Jones, chronicles the group wading through the s**t storm to come out on the other side to where they are now: stronger and sounding better than ever.
The jokes and memes shared at the band’s success reminded me of the vitriol James Blunt received off the back of his cult 2004 hit You’re Beautiful.
And the parallels between them aren’t lost on the band, when Mike and Ryan visited me to talk about Hate To Love: Nickelback.
“To take shots at that guy is ridiculous, he’s f***ing great,” Mike says.
Referencing James’ acerbic one-liners online, he adds: “His Twitter account is f***ing amazing.
“James and Liam Gallagher are just the best f***ing people.
“They are like the f****ing dynamic duo of social media. Between Liam and James, you don’t need anything else. Send those guys to war for us.”
The war appears to have already been won, with the tide turning in recent years and Nickelback’s popularity continuing to grow – which is impressive for a group who were first signed back in 1999.
Alongside the mixed reaction to the group, which has sold over 50 million records worldwide, Hate To Love: Nickelback, also reveals for the first time how bassist Mike almost died after suffering a huge stroke aged just 41.
In difficult scenes, his wife Angela recalls on camera how doctors couldn’t tell her whether Mike would live or die in the days following his collapse.
Sat next to me, it’s clear Mike is a picture of health now. And he more than sees the funny side.
“I would highly recommend going to the edge of death and coming back again,” he says.
“It was f***ing great.”
The group cancelled all the remaining dates on their No Fixed Address tour in 2015 and at the time cited Chad’s voice as the reason for the cancellation.
While he had undergone surgery on his voice box, it has now been revealed it was Mike who had been seriously unwell.
Mike says: “I don’t care about that s***. Keeping your health issues secret is ridiculous. It is real, why does it have to be a secret?”
Chipping in, Ryan asks: “Why we did we keep it a secret then?” to which Mike replies: “I didn’t, you guys did. It wasn’t me.”
Laughing Ryan says: “I didn’t want people to see how frail you were. We cancelled the whole European tour, the world tour. Everything. We pulled it down to nothing.”
Mike adds with a wry smile: “I was just trying not to die at that point.”
Poignantly, the film tells how Chad, the usually wayward and less responsible of the siblings, stepped up to the plate and took over at the hospital – signing forms and working out a rehabilitation plan for Mike, who had to learn how to walk again.
Mike says: “Chad leapt into action truly. He really did. It was pretty awesome. He has been pretty f***ing cool.”
Making the film, which is out in cinemas worldwide on March 27 and 30 only, was clearly a new experience for the group – who prefer to focus on making music and playing live than baring their souls on camera.
Their parents and families feature throughout, telling the back stories of the famous band and how hard it was for them to break through.
Chad’s two-year-marriage to Avril Lavigne is also not shied away from, along with his slightly wild upbringing which saw him do a stint in a juvenile detention centre after repeatedly breaking into his school as a teenager.
Opening up about how he felt on camera, Ryan admits: “We never wanted to talk about some of it.
“All of the interviews on the rock, I hated it. Anyone that sees themselves on TV, they see it and you think, ‘That’s bad!’”
“We wanted to be as honest as we possibly could but it’s not to show all the scars, kind of thing.”
Mike adds: “We really wanted to avoid that because nobody will take that f***ing seriously, ‘Oh, poor rock stars…’”
Indeed.
The group, who were inducted into the Canadian Hall Of Fame last summer alongside acts including Neil Young, Alanis Morissette and Shania Twain, were joined by their long-time friend and ex-bandmate Ryan Vikedal, nicknamed Vik, on stage.
Hate To Love: Nickelback documents Vik’s difficult departure from the group in 2005 and how Three Doors Down drummer Daniel stepped in to replace him.
Ryan explains: “We hadn’t talked in years. I stopped by his house and thankfully it was all good.
“Vik is a really generous person and open minded.
“When we got inducted into the Canadian Hall Of Fame, I called him and said, ‘You’ve got to be up there with us’.
“I think he was happy to do that. I just liked that it is as repaired as it can be. Nothing’s perfect but… It was a nice kind of cap on everything.”
Nickelback are preparing to kick off their Get Rollin’ World Tour next month in celebration of their tenth record, which came out two years ago and became their seventh Top Ten UK album.
The group will play four dates in the UK in May, with just a handful of tickets for the gigs in Glasgow, Manchester, London and Birmingham left on sale.
On the road they will inevitably start thinking about where to go next, but for now, Mike admits they’re just happy to keep enjoying the ride.
“I didn’t know we were going to do record number two so we’ll see what happens,” he says.
“We live our career in the moment.”
Gesturing to their team, he adds with a laugh: “These poor bastards are like, ‘So this is what we are going to do now…’
“They are our grown-ups. We just want to have fun.”
- Hate To Love: Nickelback is in cinemas worldwide on March 27 and March 30. For tickets visit nickelbackfilm.com.