On The Record: My 20 Minutes With Chad Kroeger

Last week I went to New Jersey to meet the devil. There was very little fire and brimstone involved (unless you count the onstage variety): no pentagrams or goats or serpents or anything of the sort. Rather, there was just a lot of distressed denim, some ill-advised facial hair and a rack full of those "rocker" T-shirts that inexplicably feature Celtic crosses or skulls and look like someone poured bleach all over them (you know, the kind extensively ... modeled ... by Chris Daughtry).

Actually, it's funny that I mention Daughtry, because as it turns out, he's good pals with the devil. Sometimes they tour together, bring rock and roll spectacle to sleepy Midwest towns and sell millions upon millions of records to people who generally don't buy music at all. Maybe Daughtry is like the devil's second-in-command, one of his fallen angels that roams the earth, unstoppable, impervious to critical heresy or blog-itudinal sneering or even good taste in general (the dudes in Hinder are probably also among this hellish legion).

And yet, despite his minions — and in direct opposition to pretty much everything you've ever read or heard about him — the devil is actually a pretty good guy. He's polite, funny and affable (he even offers you a beer when you first meet him), the kind of guy who you'd want to fix a Camaro with or fight alongside in a barroom brawl, "Road House" style.

He's got frosted hair and a definite bro-tee yet thinks neither of those things is particularly ironic or funny. After all, as he sees it, there's very little room for humor or irony in his line of work, which is fronting one of the most critically reviled yet commercially successful rock acts of the decade.

The devil's name is Chad Kroeger. And since 1995, he and his band, Nickelback, have survived — nay, flourished (to the tune of nearly 25 million records sold worldwide) — despite terrible-to-middling reviews and next to zero mainstream-media attention. This fact angers and perplexes pretty much everyone I know, partially because every blogger, editor, journalist or indie snob I speak to says Nickelback are terrible — but mostly because Kroeger and company's continued success proves on a daily basis that all of these so-called "tastemakers" aren't having much influence.

Which is why, when I first read about Nickelback's Thursday show at the PNC Bank Arts Center in New Jersey — a gig that also included the similarly indestructible Puddle of Mudd and Finger Eleven — I immediately decided that it would be irresponsible of me as a rock journalist (snicker) not to go ... after all, I owed it to my readers (double snicker) to leave the ivory tower in which I work and meet Nickelback and their fans on their turf. Actually, in the interest of full disclosure, my first thought was, "Wow, what a horrible lineup, this should be an absolute train wreck." I am, after all, a member of the media.

On the surface, I was hoping to figure out just who was still buying Nickelback's For All the Right Reasons some 98 weeks after it was released. (There are a lot of you out there ... the album is still in the top 20 on the Billboard albums chart and moves somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000 copies a week.) Deep down, I was probably also wishing that Kroeger would be a total di-- to me, a steak-headed dinosaur who talked smack about emo bands and wusses with keyboards. That way, it'd be much easier to write him off.

But before I get to Kroeger himself, here's a quick recap of people I spoke to at PNC who proclaimed themselves to be "huge Nickelback fans": a couple who flew from Russia to see the show; a super-pumped girl who flew from Ukraine to do the same (she didn't know the couple); about 50 families from New Jersey; a bunch of decidedly older gentlemen who said they prefer Mötley Crüe but still appreciate Nickelback; muscular dudes from New York; cops; old people; really young people; girls with supernatural tans; and a guy in a gorilla suit.

So basically f---ing everybody. All of whom claimed to have purchased every Nickelback album, all of whom had rather, um, zesty replies for rock critics who dare bash their beloved 'Back. Most of them claimed to listen to rock radio and very few (if any) knew what an "Idolator," a "Stereogum" or a "Brooklyn Vegan" was. It was like one massive anachronism, a giant retort to industry Chicken Littles who claim that terrestrial radio is dead, that no one buys records and that blogs are the future. It was totally puzzling. And sort of amazing.

And what does Kroeger think about all that? Well, not a whole lot. Turns out he doesn't like talking about "the industry" and lithely dodged questions about "the accessibility of his music." Basically, he just wanted to jabber on and on about having a good time, which he sees as his sacred duty as a rock star. He talked about his previous night, which he spent on the town with Tommy Lee ("As soon as this interview is over, I'm going back to bed," he wheezed); his dislike for guys in bands who "just spend all their time playing Xbox 360"; and his favorite place to write songs ("on the toilet," which, while I'm fairly certain he was kidding, would explain a lot).

He doesn't see Nickelback as anything more than a rock band, doesn't read blogs and doesn't care about media attention. Basically, to him, rock and roll is simple good-time music — "the kind of stuff you play to meet girls," he said — and his life is the end result of being one of the most successful rock and roll bands out there (read: It's one big party).

And once again, that's both totally puzzling and sort of amazing. Because, when you think about it, there's really no other band on the planet like Nickelback. They're a big lumbering beast of a band, the kind that doesn't mesh in any way with the lean-and-mean machinations of the industry in 2007. And why would they? To them, things aren't dire, they're great ... and will probably only get better. They've got no "blog buzz," they're never gonna be described as "critical faves," and yet they have 25 million reasons to suggest that both those things are incredibly overrated. Chad Kroeger is a lot of things, but the devil isn't one of them. If anything, his only sin is writing incredibly basic, undeniably accessible rock tunes.

And maybe, just maybe, we could learn a thing or two from him. Like how to handle 25 pounds of platinum. Because immediately following our interview, Kroeger didn't go back to bed. Rather, at a backstage BBQ, he and his bandmates were presented with plaques commemorating those 25 million records sold. The beers flowed. Photo bulbs popped. It was kind of silly and a little bizarre, an exercise in rock and roll excess and the kind of scene you would've witnessed regularly 20 years ago. Which is sort of a neat little analogy for Nickelback's career, too, when you think about it.

B-Sides: Other Stories I'm Following This Week

All those tai-chi classes must be getting expensive for ol' Lou (see "Killers Talk About Two New LPs, Duet With Lou Reed").

Russell Crowe: even surly in Q&A form (see "Christian Bale, Russell Crowe Reveal Which '3:10 To Yuma' Co-Star Has Been Sharing Bale's Bed").

Old Springs Pike are the best Broadway-star-fronted-Birken-thrash-acoustic act you've never heard of (see " 'Spring Awakening' Star John Gallagher Rocks Up Folk Music With Old Springs Pike").

Questions? Concerns? Comments? Hit me up at BTTS@MTVStaff.com.

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