\n\tIt\u2019s finally starting to dawn on the members of Sum 41. This is really it.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cFor the first time, this really feels like the end,\u201d says Deryck Whibley in an exclusive interview with Billboard Canada<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tThe frontman of the quintessential Canadian pop-punk band is speaking over Zoom from his studio in Las Vegas during a rare break from Sum 41\u2019s \u201cTour of the Setting Sum.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBack from Australia and looking ahead to the final leg of the tour in the band\u2019s home country, Whibley is coming to terms with the finality of a decision he announced in 2023: after more than two decades together, Sum 41 is coming to an end.<\/p>\n \n\tNow \u2014 following a world tour that has stretched on for nearly a year and a final album that has brought them some of the biggest success since their years as high schoolers breaking out of the garages of the Toronto suburb of Ajax, Ontario in the early 2000s \u2014 the band has just one concert left, Jan. 30 at their hometown Scotiabank Arena.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI never had an idea of when to end it or how to end it or if<\/em> I\u2019d even end it,\u201d Whibley admits. \u201cThere were lots of times I thought this is going to be the thing I do forever. But I just couldn\u2019t deny the feeling that this was the time. Something internally was telling me it was time to move on. It even surprised me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIt surprised his bandmates, too. \u201cBlindsided\u201d is the word Whibley uses.<\/p>\n \n\tTwo of those members, bassist Jason \u201cCone\u201d McCaslin and lead guitarist Dave \u201cBrownsound\u201d Baksh, he\u2019s known since his first year of high school. The others, drummer Frank Zummo and guitarist Tom Thacker (also of vital Vancouver punk band Gob), have been with the band for years. They all had settled into a locked-in performance peak and momentum that had brought them through the pandemic and towards an album they all recognized as one of the best in their sizable discography.<\/p>\n \n\tThat now-final album, Heaven :X: Hell,<\/em> has exceeded those expectations. It hit No. 37 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart and No. 23 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart. In 2024, \u201cLandmines\u201d hit No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay chart, breaking the record<\/a> for the longest gap between No. 1 hits \u2013 22 years after \u201cFat Lip\u201d ruled in 2001. Another single, \u201cDopamine,\u201d soon followed, hitting No. 1 on the same chart near the end of the year.<\/p>\n \n\tBut ending the band now gives Sum 41 the opportunity, for the first time since those early days, to control their own fate. The band, and especially Whibley, has had an unbelievably eventful career \u2013 from record-breaking album deals to struggles with addiction, tabloid infamy to multiple near death experiences. And now, they are going out on a high, ending with an induction<\/a> into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame on March 30 with a final televised performance in Vancouver on the Juno Awards broadcast.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere\u2019s a story there, and I\u2019m proud of the whole story,\u201d says Whibley. \u201cIt\u2019s a validation of everything we\u2019ve been working for, from playing in the basement as teenagers to now \u2013 here we are. We\u2019ve gone through all the ups and downs, sticking through it all and getting to a point where we could write our own ending the way we wanted to.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFor Whibley, writing that ending has meant coming to terms and processing everything Sum 41 has been through as a band, and everything he has been through personally. And doing so has also cast what we know about the band in new light.<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2024, while Sum 41 was basking in the success of \u201cLandmines,\u201d Whibley set off another explosion.<\/p>\n \n\tIn his autobiography, Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell<\/em>, published by Simon & Shuster in March, Whibley revisits the band\u2019s whole history. He writes about going from high school to becoming one of the biggest Canadian punk bands of all time, mixing rock star tales with introspective and raw reflections on living with addiction and possible PTSD.<\/p>\n \n\tAs he re-explored the band\u2019s history, he kept coming back to something he had not spoken about publicly and had only shared with a few people in his life, not even his bandmates.<\/p>\n \n\tGreig Nori, Whibley\u2019s mentor and Sum 41\u2019s manager from their early days until his eventual firing in 2005, he writes, groomed and sexually abused him over the course of many years. It started when Nori was 35 and Whibley was 16, he says in the book, and it often made it hard for him to celebrate the band\u2019s biggest successes.<\/p>\n \n\tIt took him many years to recognize what he went through as misconduct, he says, and it was his then-partner Avril Lavigne and his now-wife Ariana Cooper who told him that what he went through was abuse. He still won\u2019t use a specific word to describe it, instead choosing to just recount what he went through without labelling it.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThis was my first time truly confronting it [in the book],\u201d Whibley says. \u201cI have heard other people\u2019s stories of grooming and abuse and thought, is that what happened to me? It was still a question mark, but the stories were similar. I couldn\u2019t deny that it felt manipulative. As an adult now in this position that I\u2019m in, I can see how easily that 16-year-old kid could have been manipulated. I see how I fell into it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNori, the former leader of the band Treble Charger, has denied the allegations. As SooToday<\/em> has reported<\/a>, Nori has filed a notice of action seeking more than $6 million in damages from Whibley and Simon & Schuster for \u201clibel, breach of confidence, intrusion upon seclusion, wrongful disclosure of private facts, and placing the plaintiff in a false light.\u201d Whibley has reportedly responded with his own notice of action seeking $3 million in damages from Nori for accusing him of lying in his memoir and damaging his reputation.<\/p>\n \n\tThrough representatives, Whibley declined to comment on the legal actions, which were filed shortly after our initial interview. However, in that conversation, he did talk about the possibility his accusations could make their way to the courtroom.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIn a way, I hope it does,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d love for him to go under oath and talk about it in front of a jury and a judge. I have nothing to hide at this point. It\u2019s all out there. I already went public with it. Let\u2019s see what you have to say, Greig.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThough he accepts the possibility of a legal battle, Whibley says writing about his experiences was as much about Nori as about himself. Going public means he no longer has to hold his story in and deal with its effects on his own. But it\u2019s also about helping others who may have had similar experiences.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter the book came out, Whibley went and read all of his Instagram comments and messages. He\u2019d checked his personal DMs so rarely in the past that he had to ask his wife to show him how. But he wanted to be there for people who recognized something in his writing.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019ve had so many messages of people messaging me on social media, and also people who I know who have come up to me and said, \u2018I went through something similar,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cPeople who have never said anything in their lives. No matter what happens, it\u2019s worth it if I can help people.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWhen he was first approached about writing a book, Whibley didn\u2019t quite get it.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI thought it was going to be really boring,\u201d he says. \u201c\u2018High school band makes it.\u2019 Cool, that\u2019s fun. But what else is there to say?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAs he started putting it all on paper, he realized just how consistently eventful and unpredictable Sum 41 has been.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere\u2019s always something good or bad happening, and we\u2019ve never really taken a break.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWhibley met McCaslin and Baksh along with original drummer (and occasional rapper) Steve \u201cStevo32\u201d Jocz as high school students in Ajax in the \u201890s.<\/p>\n \n\tThey played their first official show as Sum 41 at a battle of the bands at the Opera House in Toronto. They hatched a scheme to sell the most tickets, which would guarantee them a professional photo shoot, but despite the school bus full of friends they brought to the show, they were made to play first on the 5 pm slot and were subsequently ghosted on the prize.<\/p>\n \n\tBut it was there they solidified their relationship with Nori (who Whibley had invited after sneaking backstage at a Treble Charger show) and Marc Costanzo of the band Len (famous for the Billboard Hot 100 No. 9 hit, \u201cSteal My Sunshine\u201d).<\/p>\n \n\tThose connections helped Whibley sign a publishing deal with EMI Publishing Canada when he was still 17. That helped them record their demos, which they sent out to all the major labels in Canada, getting a hard pass from all of them. Whibley writes in Walking Disaster that Universal Music Canada called them the worst band they had heard in a decade. (The only bite was from a smaller Canadian label called Aquarius Records, run by music industry legend Donald K. Tarlton, who they gave exclusive Canadian rights to when they eventually signed a worldwide major label deal.)<\/p>\n \n\tThe key, they thought, was to get the labels to see them live, where they went all out in every show, which included trampolines and roman candles and flaming drumsticks. Instead of playing private shows in sterile label offices, they arranged a five-week residency at a venue called Ted\u2019s Wrecking Yard and invited all of the industry bigwigs to see them there \u2013 and this time, they thought beyond Canada.<\/p>\n \n\tThe shows became the stuff of local legend, and it became the spot for other thirsty bands to try to make deals too.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere were all these other bands who thought, who\u2019s this young kid band out of high school that\u2019s getting all this attention? We\u2019ve been doing this forever, we\u2019re more punk rock than them,\u201d Whibley remembers. \u201cThen when all these labels started coming out to see us, every band in Toronto was all of a sudden our best friend. I remember this one band, Robin Black & The Intergalactic Rock Stars, coming to out to our shows and trying to get a record deal, like \u2018f-ck this Sum 41 band, you need to sign us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBy the end of 1999, Sum 41 had signed a $3.5 million record deal as the first rock act on the major label Island Def Jam. At the time, it was the biggest deal ever signed by a Canadian band.<\/p>\n \n\tThe band\u2019s debut on the label, 2001\u2019s All Killer No Filler,<\/em> became a big hit on both sides of the border, going platinum in Canada and the United States. \u201cFat Lip,\u201d with its iconic video that perfectly captures the burgeoning counterculture of the era, topped the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart, joining videos for the endlessly catchy \u201cIn Too Deep\u201d and \u201cMakes No Difference\u201d (from their debut EP, Half Hour of Power,<\/em> the video featured an out-of-nowhere cameo from DMX) in heavy rotation on MuchMusic and MTV.<\/p>\n \n\tSum 41 were the right band at the right time. It was an era when bands like Blink-182 and Green Day were hitting the mainstream, Warped Tour was providing a home for teenagers to see punk bands on a yearly basis, skate culture was hitting its peak and Jackass<\/em> was becoming a home for unapologetic juvenile humor.<\/p>\n \n\tThey were four high school punks from the suburb, playing pranks and having house parties \u2013 and they gave their fans a front row seat. In a time before social media and YouTube, they took a camcorder everywhere they went, filming their pranks (usually involving petty property damage with eggs or fire extinguishers, though also often piss and shit) and used them as their VHS calling cards.<\/p>\n \n\tIt resonated with fans and music media, but not so much with critics. They were often written off in the media as goofy burnout kids, trend-folllowers or mainstream rip-offs of underground bands. They were covered for their antics, but not as much for the songs.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIn a way, I think you set the tone for the way people are going to receive you. When you come in and everything\u2019s a joke, then nothing really gets taken seriously,\u201d says Whibley. \u201cFor the longest time, that was a pet peeve for me. I have a sense of humour, but I\u2019m not the funny person in the band. I\u2019m the writer and I\u2019ve always been the writer, and I\u2019ve always wanted to talk more about the lyrics and the music and the inspiration. I do love the humour of the band in the early days. I just always wished there could have been some kind of balance. It was very personal to me and I was very serious about it, but it did get overlooked or overshadowed.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAs the band progressed, their music got darker and heavier. Songs on 2002\u2019s Does This Look Infected? <\/em>and 2004\u2019s Chuck<\/em> often covered themes of depression and existential angst, alienation, health and societal unrest. Looking back, Whibley recognizes lyrics, like the \u201cdead end situation,\u201d he sings about being stuck in on \u201cNo Brains,\u201d that may have subconsciously touched his private struggle with his feelings about what he was going through with Nori.<\/p>\n \n\tChuck was also informed by a near death experience the band had while on a War Child trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Gunfire broke out while they were there, and they named the album after the Canadian UN peacekeeper who saved them, Charles \u201cChuck\u201d Pelletier. The album often felt far removed from the pop-punk hijinks of just a few years ago.<\/p>\n \n\tAround this time, Whibley dated Paris Hilton and then spent four years married to Avril Lavigne from 2006 to 2010. While Whibley was a regular of the celebrity-filled L.A. party scene, he was often mocked for his height and his unconventional rock star looks, which he says took a toll. He became an unlikely fixture of celebrity tabloids, which were rampant and often vicious in the 2000s era.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI hated that kind of stuff,\u201d he says. \u201cThe funny thing is as much as Avril and I ended up in some of it, we avoided it at all costs. The amount of times we were able to go in and out of back entrances to avoid being photographed was amazing. We were out quite a bit, and I would say 90% of the time we were never photographed \u2013 but we had to work at it. There\u2019s some times we couldn\u2019t, and that\u2019s when you saw us.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe was still in the public eye, but frustratingly rarely for his music.<\/p>\n \n\tOver the years, Whibley struggled with addiction to drugs and alcohol and had multiple near-death experiences, sometimes in the midst of Sum 41 tours. After being hospitalized for liver and kidney failure in 2014, Whibley and his wife Ariana dedicated themselves to getting clean. He\u2019s now been sober for 11 years.<\/p>\n \n\tSum 41 took their only break during that time, though Whibley says it was barely a break \u2013 really only the length of one album cycle, with a five-year gap between 2011\u2019s Screaming Bloody Murder<\/em> and 2016\u2019s 13 Voices.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tThe lineup shifted, with first Baksh (in 2006) and then Jocz (in 2013) parting ways with the band, replaced by drummer Zummo and guitarist Thacker. Baksh later returned to the band in 2015, giving the band a three guitar attack and often freeing up Whibley to focus on singing and become a more theatrical frontman in live shows. They went independent, signing in 2016 to Hopeless Records then the semi-indie Rise Records for Heaven :X: Hell.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tThough no longer in the cultural zeitgeist like they were in the late \u201890s and early 2000s, the band kept releasing solid albums and playing for a consistently engaged audience of diehard fans.<\/p>\n \n\tThen eventually, things started to change.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt felt like things started getting taken more seriously,\u201d says Whibley.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter outlasting the hype and the antics, the health issues and the record label feeding frenzies, Sum 41 were finally being covered on their own merits, as songwriters and performers. When Sum 41 got called for interviews, journalists actually wanted to talk about the music.<\/p>\n \n\tWhibley, who had done some production work for Avril Lavigne and other artists, started getting asked to write songs for other artists \u2013 some smaller and some more household names (he won\u2019t divulge who). When Covid lockdowns paused the band\u2019s touring schedule, he decided to give it a shot. But he was surprised at what he was being recruited to do.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cEveryone was asking for pop-punk style songs,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought, pop-punk? Why does anyone want pop-punk? It\u2019s been like 15 years since I\u2019ve written a pop-punk song.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAs he started writing, it came surprisingly easy to him. One of the first songs he wrote was \u201cLandmines,\u201d which he says only took him about 10 minutes to write. He kept writing, and the songs kept coming.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAfter about seven songs, I thought, you know what, I actually kind of like all these songs. I don\u2019t know if people will see them as Sum 41 songs, but I don\u2019t want to give them away either.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe decided to turn them into a double album, with one side pop-punk and one side metal \u2013 the two sides of Sum 41. The album, Heaven :X: Hell,<\/em> has been their most successful in years. After \u201cLandmines\u201d brought them back to No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay chart, they followed it with another No. 1 in \u201cDopamine.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe didn\u2019t think we would chart on radio or even get played on a single station on this record,\u201d Whibley says. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty phenomenal. It feels like a miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNow, it\u2019s starting to feel a lot like 2001. Pop-punkand emo are hot again, with bands like Blink-182 and Green Day headlining festivals and Warped Tour making a 30th anniversary resurgence featuring Sum 41\u2019s friends and fellow Canadians Simple Plan. Festivals like When We Were Young and Canada\u2019s All Your Friends Fest are drawing nostalgic 30 and 40-somethings back to the angsty music of their youth.<\/p>\n \n\tMainstream pop and hip-hop acts like MGK and Willow Smith and Machine Gun Kelly have also \u2018gone\u2019 pop-punk, fusing throwback riffs and hooks with more modern sounds. There\u2019s a newfound appetite for Sum 41 as a touring and recording project, but this is the moment they\u2019re taking their final bow.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt never felt to us like we were trying to do anything except for what we loved to do. And over time, I felt like we proved that,\u201d Whibley says. \u201cYou know, we\u2019re leaving the music business at the time when our genre is at a peak, because we just do what\u2019s right for us.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSum 41 went from being labeled a flash-in-the-pan to becoming nearly three-decade veterans of rock. They witnessed multiple music industry shifts and grew old within a scene that many other bands flamed out in.<\/p>\n \n\tSo what is their legacy? What do they want to be their epitaph?<\/p>\n \n\tWhibley sums it up with one word: honesty.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cEverything for us has just always been honest,\u201d he says. \u201cWe never gave a f-ck about anything other than what we wanted to do. That\u2019s who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Sum](\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/02-Sum-41-Cover-Story-Billboard-Canada-Lane-Dorsey-billboard-1548.jpg?w=1024\")
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