Monte and the rest of the team were infinitely supportive of finding bands that could be coached. Enter Slipknot. Monte brought the band to me and told me how great they were. When we went to see them, it was like nothing I’d ever witnessed—nine guys in masks and matching jumpsuits going completely insane. There were two crazed percussionists a furiously precise fast drummer (Joey Jordison, RIP), and a vocalist who seemed as intent on injuring himself as he was in screaming and singing. Their shows clocked in somewhere between performance art and the end of the world. It was ridiculous in an incredible way. I was similarly magnetized by them as I had been by Pantera, and the only time I looked away from the stage was to watch the crowd, which was equally spellbound. This was something fucked-up, perverse, and remarkable.
‘Monte, this is crazy,’ I said. ‘I can’t even describe it. Don’t let them get away.’
Slipknot became part of the Roadrunner team, and we went into their first album all guns blazing, pairing them with maverick producer Ross Robinson, who had worked with Korn and Sepultura. The first single was ‘Wait And Bleed,’ and we were able to get it onto mainstream rock radio, which was no small achievement for such an extreme band. Everyone at Roadrunner worked incredibly hard, and the band’s music spread like a disease. MTV came on board, the international department made it a priority, and ‘Wait And Bleed’ became the first gigantic worldwide hit on Roadrunner. I was so proud of my team—some of whom I’d inherited, some of whom I’d hired—for being so gung-ho about breaking Slipknot without taking any creative control away from the band. And Slipknot rewarded us by playing to their strengths, killing themselves on the road, and becoming the scariest, wildest, most unpredictable, and best fucking metal band of their generation.
That was a major turning point. I had a great team that made the label shine, which also reflected well on me. It was everything I had wanted at PolyGram, everything I had tried to put together at ATCO—and had for a short while—but on a level where no one’s main objective was to throw darts at the board to see what sticks. Cees was delighted. He couldn’t begin to understand Slipknot, but he didn’t have to. I understood Slipknot, and my staff understood them even better. Cees understood the platinum records the band brought him, and that was all he ever wanted. After we helped turn Slipknot into a world-class metal band, I thought, Man, if we can do that for such a subversive, misanthropic group, imagine what we could do for a mainstream-style band? I would find out soon enough.
One of the A&R guys at the company, Ron Burman, was excited about music, bubbled with enthusiasm, and was eager to share his discoveries. He would regularly come into my office with six new tapes and tell me they were all great. One day, I asked him to discuss his latest gems with me, one at a time.
‘Ron, is this great?’ I’d say each time.
‘Yeah!’ he’d reply.
‘Ron, are they all great?’ I asked after hearing them, knowing full well that they weren’t. Some were average at best. ‘Which one is going to be the biggest?’
‘They’re all going to be!’
‘No, wrong. That’s not how it works,’ I corrected him. ‘You’ve got to see them, taste them, smell them. You’ve got to determine how something makes you feel, why it accomplishes that, and how it compares to everything else. Not everything can be the best.’
He listened intently to what I was saying, and some of it sunk in. His enthusiasm never waned, and he kept bringing me boxes of new tapes. One of them contained a grungy song called ‘Leader Of Men’ from an unknown rock band.
‘Okay, now what is that?’ I asked, my ears perking to the music.
‘It’s some band out of Vancouver,’ Ron said. ‘I think it’s really good.’
‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘There’s something there. This is a really good song.’
When Ron went back to his cubicle, he was glowing. I finally liked something he played for me. I looked at the tape and it was one of three demos by a band called Nickelback. I sat at my desk and played ‘Leader Of Men’ over and over. I did my research, made some calls, and found out they had released an EP and a couple of albums on their own between 1996 and 1998. They shopped them everywhere, but no one wanted them. Everyone thought their latest record, The State, was horrible. I kept playing ‘Leader Of Men’ and thought it could be a hit. I’d heard their other songs, as well as The State, and I thought that if they had the financial support and the right team to work with—our team—they could be pretty successful.
I went straight to Dave Loncao, Roadrunner’s head of radio promotion, who I had hired a few months earlier. I played him ‘Leader Of Men’ and asked him what he thought.
‘It’s a fucking smash,’ he enthused. ‘I know I can get this onto radio, big time.’
Nickelback’s frontman, Chad Kroeger, had a great voice in a commercial Creed-meets-Bush sort of way. ‘Leader Of Men’ didn’t have a chorus, which is not always good, but in this case, it impressed me. The song had a great build-up, and anyone who can write a song that repeats the same kind of verse four times without boring their listeners and doesn’t need a refrain is a damn good songwriter.
I took Ron Burman to Vancouver with me to check out the band live. Ron was thrilled that I was interested in one of his finds and was excited about the trip. We saw Nickelback in a small rock club. The sound in the place wasn’t great, and it wasn’t packed, but the band were good, and Chad was a solid frontman onstage. I decided to sign them.
At the time, Nickelback were working with an inexperienced attorney. I asked him what was happening with the band, and he showed all his cards. Nickelback had self-released The State in late 1998, and it didn’t go anywhere. The lawyer was trying to get the band a deal in Canada, and while they had generated a bit of interest at EMI, it seemed to have waned. I had been worried that there would be a bidding war for Nickelback, yet they couldn’t even get a decent deal in their own town.
I was excited, but I held my hand close to the vest. ‘You know,’ I said to the lawyer. ‘I might be interested. Let me think about it.’
I signed Nickelback to a relatively cheap deal. We put out ‘Leader Of Men’ as a single, and the band went Top 10 on radio. It happened that fast. By the time we put out The State in late 2000, the album had been released twice—including, as it turned out, in a limited run by EMI Canada—and we were still able to blast out three more singles and reach #130 on Billboard. The scene was set for the follow-up, which was recorded in the same studio they’d used for their last album. Recognizing their roots in classic rock and grunge, we hooked them up with producer Rick Parashar, who had previously worked in Seattle with Pearl Jam, Temple Of The Dog, and Alice In Chains. He clicked perfectly with Kroeger, and in just a few months Nickelback had recorded Silver Side Up.
Before the album came out, I heard some of the tracks, including ‘How You Remind Me.’ I had no doubt that the song would be a huge radio hit, and if that translated into sales, they could be the biggest band on the label. It was almost like hearing Bon Jovi all over again. That song started a wave of momentum that never let up. In October 2001, a month after it was released, Silver Side Up was certified gold and platinum. Less than four years later, it had gone six times platinum in the US, eight times platinum in Canada, and three times platinum in the UK.
Before we signed Nickelback, Roadrunner was worth somewhere between ten and fifteen million dollars. By 2005, the label was worth closer to sixty million. We had effectively boosted the label’s profile and legitimized it for anyone who had previously dismissed it as an underground metal label. Moreover, we had done so while retaining a team atmosphere and nurturing and supporting all of our artists as they progressed through their careers.