Interview
Interview
Stage Times: Simple Plan
From the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to playing a field of metalheads, Simple Plan walk us through their most memorable performances
From packed basements in suburban Montreal to festival fields with crowds stretching back as far as the eye can see, Simple Plan’s 25-year journey has been anything but ordinary. Champions of a generation who wore their hearts on their sleeves and their band tees tight, the Canadian pop-punk icons have long-balanced gut-wrenching sincerity with a sense of fun – soundtracking breakups, breakdowns, and all of the beautifully messy bits in between.
Now, with the release of their career-spanning Prime Video documentary The Kids In The Crowd, they’re inviting fans into the heart of their story like never before. Featuring interviews with friends, peers and pop-punk royalty – including blink-182’s Mark Hoppus and Avril Lavigne – as well as never-before-seen archival footage from throughout their career, it takes us right back to the very beginning. From meeting in high school and practicing in their parents’ homes to signing a record deal and the global chart domination that followed, it’s a candid reflection on the trials and tribulations that shaped them, and a celebration of the family they found along the way.
“When we set out to make this movie, we knew that the fans had to be a huge part of the story,” drummer Chuck Comeau explains.
“They’ve played such a pivotal role in this, and that’s where the title comes from. When we were growing up as teenagers in Montreal, we were the kids in the crowd. We were looking up at all these bands like NOFX, Lagwagon, Strung Out and Pennywise. They were our idols, and their songs meant so much to us. Somehow, we got lucky, and now there are all these other kids in the crowd coming to our shows. Being a fan of music is so meaningful, and it’s shaped our lives and who we are as people. Through everything though, we never forgot what it’s like to be that kid in the crowd.”
With those community values still sitting at the heart of everything they do, Simple Plan will return to the UK for a massive run of arena shows alongside long-time friends and punk icons The Offspring this November. Looking back over a quarter-century of camaraderie, chaos, and choruses made to be screamed by thousands of voices in unison, we asked Chuck and frontman Pierre Bouvier to pick out some of the moments that made them, from European club disasters to hometown triumphs.
The gig that made you want to play music
Pierre: It was the second show I went to, and it was NOFX, Face To Face, Ten Foot Pole, and Trigger Happy at Le Spectrum in Montreal. It was 1994 and, at the time, Montreal was the mecca of pop-punk and punk rock. Those types of bands were huge, and that really helped shape who we are today. Seeing those shows, being in the mosh pit and going behind the club to meet the bands after… It felt like those guys were accessible. They weren’t the typical rock stars that we had known before, like Eddie Vedder or Axl Rose. Those guys were these godly figures, but these bands dressed like us and acted like us. I knew that I wanted to be in that environment for the rest of my life.
Chuck: Pierre and I actually went to that show together, and it was huge for me too, but there’s another I want to add. The first rock band I went to see was Pearl Jam, right after they had released ‘Even Flow’. They played at the Verdun Auditorium in Montreal, and my dad took me. I was 13 or 14 years old, and it was life changing stuff. It was in this small, sweaty arena that held around 4,000 people, and it was so hot. They were actually hosing people down inside the venue. I walked out of that show and thought, ‘This is what I want to do with my life. I want to be on that stage’.
Photo by Djamilla Rosa Cochran/WireImage
The first
Pierre: It was in a little town east of Montreal, and it was an interesting time for us. Chuck and I had another band together before, and eventually we transitioned into Simple Plan. It was a big deal, because our previous band still existed. We were successful, the band was doing well, and we were selling out 1,000-seater rooms in our hometown. It was nerve wracking because we had a lot to prove. Simple Plan was a lot poppier, but we wanted to show people that it’d still got some balls, and it was still a great band. The first show was about proving to people why we made the choices that we made, and it went pretty well. We definitely improved a lot over the course of the next year though.
Chuck: What ended up being a great thing for the movie was that we actually filmed the entire set. It’s in there, and you see the awkward between song banter with Jeff [Stinco, guitarist] taking the lead. That was the first and the last time that he had a microphone on stage, and he has not uttered a word since! It’s amazing that we have an artefact of that show though, and it was important that we put it in there. It’s not the most flattering, but it’s the real history of our band.
The smallest
Pierre: That one’s also in the documentary. It was a show in Hanover, Germany on our first European tour. The album had just been released, but it was not yet popular in Europe. We had a bunch of little gigs here and there, and we were doing some opening slots for slightly bigger bands too. On this night, we were headlining, because people in Hanover were apparently very excited about the new album. It felt like they were going to turn us into the biggest band in Germany, so we played a show in a club there. A maximum of 15 people showed up. It was empty, and it was very humiliating. It’s all part of the journey though, and at that point Chuck and I had already been in a band together for seven years. When you have those kinds of shows and then finally find some success later down the line, that’s the best way. You learn to care about it, you learn to nurture it, and you work hard so that you never lose it. You don’t take it for granted.
The biggest
Pierre: We actually played one of our biggest shows ever earlier this year. We played for 80 or 90,000 people in Quebec City at the Festival d’été, which was incredible. We were there with Avril Lavigne, and the crowd was wild from the get-go. We had the confetti, the streamers, the pyro, the cryo… We pulled all the bells and whistles, and everything went smoothly. Our parents were there, our brothers were there, our families were there. It was great.
To be this deep into your career and still having moments like that must feel incredibly special…
Chuck: I was joking with the director of the film that we had to stop the release so that we could put that one in there! It was the most epic concert of all time, and it felt like it needed to be part of the story. We’ve actually pushed the release back a few times because we had to keep adding new moments in there, and we filmed until the very last minute. That’s great, because it makes it feel so current. It feels like everything happened just yesterday.
One of the biggest shows that we’ve headlined, which is also shown in the documentary, was a festival called I Wanna Be in São Paulo, Brazil. It was at the Allianz Park Stadium, there were around 55,000 people there, and we were closing the festival. That’s just unbelievable to me. It’s childhood stuff, the kind of thing you see on MTV when you’re a kid. All of a sudden, you fast forward 25 years into your band, and you’re still playing those gigs. It’s been a remarkable journey, and in the film, you can feel the magnitude of being on that stage. It’s just the four of us up there, nobody else can help you. You have to live up to that moment, and you have to deliver. That’s part of the story of the documentary, and one thing that we do pretty well as a band. When the stakes are high, and when it’s important, we don’t choke.
Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
The weirdest
Pierre: We’ve been put on the line-up for a lot of heavy festivals, especially in Europe. We’ve done some where we felt so out of place, surrounded by metal bands. There was one where we played right before Slipknot, and we thought we were going to get killed. Surely no one wants to hear ‘Welcome To My Life’ before they see Slipknot, right?! Strangely enough though, it was a pretty energetic show. The fans out there had a great time, and the reception was amazing. Before stepping on stage though it was like, ‘Why are we even here? Can we just cancel?’.
Chuck: There was another weird one on that same Germany trip too. The label had this amazing idea that they were going to rent a bus and take us to schools. We were playing around lunchtime on this stage truck, pulling up at these schools. They were sure it was going to be this massively talked about thing, but it was pretty awkward. That and the Macy’s Day Parade were the craziest for me…
Pierre: Oh yeah, the Macy’s Day Parade! That was so weird. We weren’t allowed to actually play, it was all lip-syncing, and we don’t ever do that. Our label was like, ‘You cannot say no to the Macy’s Day Parade’. It’s the biggest thing in America, and to be fair, our record sales tripled the week after we played. We were on the M&M’s float going round and round for hours. We had to go through the whole city, then you have about ten seconds in front of the camera where the hosts are. You play a little bit of your song, then you move on. The rest of the time you’re just there waving. Honestly, I would do it again in a heartbeat!
The worst
Pierre: There was a radio festival at Dodger Stadium, and we weren’t that big at the time. There were a lot of bigger acts playing the main stage, and then in between those acts there was another stage. During the day, they asked us to play a little acoustic set there. We didn’t have time to soundcheck, so we just went up there and started playing. The sound was coming out of speakers that were about 500 feet away from us, so there was a massive delay. Jeff started playing guitar, and I heard it a second later, so I was singing one second later. From there, it all started falling apart. We were supposed to play five songs, but we got through one before we called it quits. I just dropped the mic and was like, ‘I’m not doing this’. It was quite embarrassing, but it never came back to haunt us. I’ve never seen recordings of it or anything.
Chuck: We had never played in a stadium before, no one told us we had to think about a delay!
The best
Pierre: My favourite was when we headlined our hometown arena back in 2005. During the first few years of the band, we sold millions of records and had lots of success around the world, but at home it felt like we were being ignored by the media. They were talking about other artists who sold out 500 capacity rooms in Europe, whilst we were selling out 5,000 capacity rooms and being ignored by them. In 2005 though, we sold out our hometown arena, and that was it. At that point, the media switched to saying, ‘Oh my God, these hometown boys are taking over the world’. My music teacher from high school was at that show, my mum, my dad, my uncles, my cousins, everybody was there, and I could see them in the stands. We walked out on the stage, and the crowd just erupted. All of us got so choked up that it was hard to get through the first few songs. That’s still such a warm memory.
Chuck: I can still see it in my mind so clearly, walking out into the place where my favourite hockey team plays. It’s so iconic, like the Wembley of Montreal. That was such a surreal moment.
Simple Plan play Cardiff, London, Newcastle, Manchester and Glasgow this November. Find tickets here
Simple Plan: The Kids In The Crowd is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video
Header image: Dana Jacobs / Getty
