Chuck Comeau - Simple Plan 'When You're Playing to 10,000 People [to] Playing to 800... That's Going To F*ck You Up'

Being able to celebrate 25 years as a band is no easy feat - especially for a band like Simple Plan.

Throughout their quarter century rise to fame, the Montréal pop punk outfit worked their butts off to gain a global fanbase through rigorously touring schedules following the release of their two breakthrough albums, No Pads, No Helmets... Just Balls and Still Not Getting Any... which found the band at the height of their mid-2000s popularity with songs like 'Addicted', 'Welcome To My Life' and 'Perfect' - at a time when mainstream media wasn't impartial to pop punk and rock bands; and when the likes of Britney Spears, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Good Charlotte, and the band's close friends in blink-182 and Avril Lavigne were played one after another on music tv and radio.

But the hype almost ended for Simple Plan following the release of their self-titled album in 2008. As mainstream slowly started moving away from hard rock/metal bands, Simple Plan were not only caught in the rip, but were battling fatigue and negative reactions from fans after venturing away from the roots that made them a household name. These internal struggles are in the spotlight for the first time with their new documentary The Kids in The Crowd - streaming now on Prime Video worldwide.

With the documentary showcasing the band's journey from their parent's basement to SOLD OUT Arenas in Australia and beyond, there's never been a better time to dive into the history of one of the world's nicest and most humble human beings.

Fresh after the release of the doco (and new song 'Nothing Changes') Wall Of Sound was lucky enough to chat with drummer Chuck Comeau about the trials and tribulations of their quarter century rise up the ranks, "stalking" Mark Hoppus from blink-182, the aforementioned turbulent self-titled era - and how they've maintained their integrity and kind-hearted nature after all this time...

Watch the interview or read on for the best bits...

Firstly, after watching The Kids In The Crowd, it became apparent that without the help of blink-182's Mark Hoppus, quite frankly, Simple Plan would not be where they are today. Chuck divulged how both bands met and how he convinced the future pop punk godfather to feature on their breakthrough single.

"We had met Mark with our first band... Reset, which was a punk rock band. We played with bands like Good Riddance, Lagwagon, Strung Out, Ten Foot Pole, NOFX and Pennywise. We were in that part of that scene and we played this festival called Snow Jam, which was kind of like a snowboard/punk rock festival. And blink was part of it. There was High Standard and No Use For A Name and blink (at the time they were called blink).

They were at the beginning of their career, but you could tell something was happening with them. There was a buzz and we became friends.

And then fast forward to all these years later, they're about to release Enema Of The State and we're forming our new band (Reset broke up, we're about to start Simple Plan). And I give him a demo of Simple Plan, like the early, early incarnation. There's a version of 'I'd Do Anything' there. It's called 'Anything' back then, and it has a different verse and a different intro, but that chorus is still there. And he sends me this email a few months later saying, 'Hey Chuck, I've been listening to your demo. I'm at the MTV Awards and I'm prepping for the show tomorrow, but I've been playing your demo all day. It's my favourite song right now. Let me know how I can help you in any way that I can'.

We're the smallest band in the world. And we get this email from literally the biggest band in the world at that moment. They're selling millions of records. They're on the MTV awards, they're on American Pie, they're massive. They're blink-182.

A few months later we got signed and we're making a record. And I remembered he loved that song. And I'm like, 'Do you think you'd want to sing on it since you love it so much?' And amazingly, I still don't understand why... He's like, 'Yeah, I'll do it. Come to San Diego'. And we were on the next plane to California and we got there and he sang on it. And I mean, it changed our lives.

It was so generous... There was absolutely no incentive for him to do this. He did it just because that's what punk rock bands did. They're supposed to help out the scene and help young bands, and he just passed it forward. And that just shows you what kind of guy he is.

This interaction is not only touched on in Simple Plan's documentary, but it's further explained how Chuck - who was also acting as the band's manager at the time - co-ordinated a music video shoot for 'I'd Do Anything' at one of blink-182's US tour dates and actually convinced Mark to stop by before their own performance later that day. It's absolute insanity how a baby-faced Chuck Comeau managed to pull this off, but it's a testament to his drive and determination that's been present since those early years.

In saying that, Simple Plan could have been very different had Chuck and frontman Pierre Bouvier not patched up their beef from a few years prior...

It's revealed that Chuck was booted from their former band Reset, and the pair went two years without talking before a chance encounter at rock show sparked a rekindling of their friendship, a burying of the hatchet and formation of what would later become Simple Plan.

I questioned if they didn't make amends, would Simple Plan even exist today? To which the drummer, paused, before proudly confessing.

"That's a good question. I don't know. We were trying so hard, Jeff and I and Sébastien to find a singer that would be better than Pierre. That basically would've been the vindication of like, 'You kicked me out and I'm going to make it and you won't'. And I think after a few months or many months of searching for someone that was going to be better than him, it dawned on me that he was the one, he had to be the singer in the band because he was my favourite songwriter and my favourite singer and my best friend.

Even though we hadn't talked in two years... this is how it was supposed to be. We were meant to be in the band together.

So we randomly ran into each other at a show in Montreal, and [in] the back of my head, I'm like, we should bury the hatchet. But there was a bit of a deeper plan. I was like, 'You should be in the band'. And I convinced him to give us a shot. He came to practice in my parents' basement, and we played him a song, and then he basically wrote the chorus of 'I'd Do Anything' over that little riff that we had, came back a few days later and played it for us. And we all went like, 'Well, man, that's it. That's what we need to do. He's the guy, he's the one'. And we found our singer and our musical direction.

That's the first song we ever wrote. Literally 'I'd Do Anything', is first song on our first record, first song we ever wrote together.

So when you asked the question, would it have been Simple Plan without me and Pierre? I mean, I think it could have been maybe something different. Maybe Pierre could have been successful with a different band. Maybe... I could have formed a band without him. But I don't know. I don't think it would've been anywhere close to what it is. I think that we had to reunite..."

And the rest, they say, is history.... but imagine if they continued with a sound akin to the 1999 demo (as featured on the documentary soundtrack) - Simple Plan could have become a punk rock band with a raw, edgier sound compared to the end result...

Simple Plan's music has been at the forefront of many heated debates within the alternative scene for years. Too poppy or emo for punk, too punk for pop... with evidence of this shown during their Vans Warped Tour performances in the mid-2000s. But it wasn't until the release of 2008's self-titled where the fans turned on the band for going against the grain and changing up their sound completely.

There's no other way to say this, that era of the band was tense. Following widely successful tours and playing in front of tens of thousands of fans... to the fame all but drying up almost overnight; this was to be Simple Plan's most gut-wrenching time as a band.

As one of the (rare) fans who actually appreciated the album, I asked Chuck to touch on that period - as I didn't realise it was such a stressful time until seeing the documentary - to which he opened up like never before and let it all come out.

"We felt a lot of pressure. We just came off back to back extremely successful records [selling] 3 million copies each. We're on top of the world. Everything is going amazing. But under us, there's a bit of a shifting music world where pop punk and guitars and rock bands, it's not really the thing anymore. It's all about Timberland, Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado, that's the new kind of sound. And also even beyond that, because we were never really chasing commercial success or radio in the sense of it's beyond that.

When you're in the band and you're successful and you make two records, the third album is a tough one because you start to feel this weird, and I don't know why it's kind of dumb, and I wish I could go back and talk to my 2007 self and say, 'what are you thinking?' But you start to feel this pressure that if you don't reinvent yourself completely, you're treading water and you're going to get slammed by everyone. And you're not being a real artist if you don't completely reinvent who you are. And we felt that pressure.

We made a record that I think was a little bit ahead of its time in the sense of when I look at Fall Out Boy and how they came back with the hip-hop beats and all that stuff, we did that in 2007/8.

We had Danja [Timberland's producer] doing these really crazy tracks. And we wrote pop punk songs around those. And I don't think people were ready for that in 2008. And maybe we didn't execute it the way we should have. Maybe it wasn't as cool as what the concept was in our heads. But in my mind, the template, the genesis of the record, it was a really cool idea of mixing these hip-hop sounds with these big soaring, Simple Plan courses. But for whatever reason, it did not land and people didn't like it.

We thought it was going to be the biggest thing in the world, and it really did not go that way. And it crushed us.

We spent a year and a half writing that record. We've invested so much time. Every detail, we poured our hearts and soul into it. And then it goes on to not, I mean, it's interesting. In some countries it did really well, but in the US it was a complete tank, literally. It destroyed everything we had going on. And yeah, it was a heart crusher. It was really, really tough.

And it created a lot of tension in the band because when you're used to playing to five, 10,000 people, all of a sudden you're playing to 800 people. Yeah, that's going to affect you. That's going to fuck you up.

And then we said, we got to go back to who we are. We got to find the original quintessential Simple Plan sound again. And that led us to Get Your Heart On, which was such a fun record, one of our best. And we returned to our fun side instead of being all bummed out and taking ourselves so seriously, we went back to the essence of Simple Plan and it saved the band."

But, despite all the negativity the self-titled record faced in its early years, it seems fans have changed their tone with it as Chuck explained - which further proves it was released wayyyy ahead of it's time.

"What's really funny is that that self-titled record now has become a fan favourite... A lot of bands, it happens to them. If you look at Weezer like Pinkerton, everybody hated it when it came out. And somehow now... it's that iconic record that everybody's like, 'oh, that's my favourite'.

We have a lot of that with self-titled because there's some really emotional songs on there. There's some really kind of darker songs that people now are like, 'oh, I wish you could play the whole record. It's so great'.

So it's just one of those things in a career you never know. You get these highs, you get these lows, but it's how you bounce back from them, and it's how you keep going."

Had their story ended following the release of their third album, we wouldn't have witnessed the band bounce back and turn into the pop punk icons they've well and truly earned their stripes for, resulting in over 10 million albums sold, a career of soaring highs, tumultuous lows and a legacy that'll withstand the test of time.

For the true fans - and critics alike - settle in and take a look at Simple Plan's origin story in The Kids In the Crowd - which proves even the smallest of ideas can become gargantuan with plenty of passion, determination and motivation behind them.

Interview by Paul 'Browny' Brown @brownypaul

The Kids In the Crowd is streaming now on Prime Video - watch it right here

Check out the official soundtrack here