Q21:49Deryck Whibley: Why Sum 41 is disbanding after 27 years
Deryck Whibley had a nagging feeling for the previous 5 years. He wished to go away Sum 41 — the band he shaped together with his buddies from Ajax, Ont., in 1996 — however he did not wish to be ungrateful.
“I’ve at all times had these ideas and wishes, and questioning, ‘Will I ever do one thing else? Do I’ve extra to supply in life?'” he tells Tom Energy in a Q interview. “Each time I had these ideas of perhaps doing one thing else, I’d bury them.”
Whibley knew he was fortunate to play music for a residing and beloved being in Sum 41. So he continued to work together with his 4 bandmates on the album they simply launched, Heaven :x: Hell.
It wasn’t till they completed making the album that Whibley decided.
“I sat again and I listened to it, and I believed, ‘This to me feels just like the work is full now,'” Whibley says. “This double report — one aspect pop-punk, one aspect heavier — from starting to finish, it encapsulates all the pieces musically we have tried to do over time.”
However simply because Whibley determined to close down the In Too Deep band did not imply that everybody else knew. He took nearly a 12 months to inform his bandmates after his realization, selecting to tell them by way of e-mail.
Whibley wished to rigorously craft his phrases, in addition to give his bandmates time to consider what he mentioned, with out them feeling the necessity to reply instantly.
When the 5 of them obtained on the telephone to speak about this, it was a “loving and supportive” dialog.
“It is not a bitter breakup,” Whibley says. “That perhaps makes it much more unhappy as a result of all of us actually care about one another. It most likely could be simpler if we have been mad and indignant and hated one another or simply by no means wished to see one another once more.”
The subsequent step was telling the general public. On Could 8, 2023, Sum 41 advised their followers on X that they’d be disbanding — however not and not using a farewell tour.
Whibley wasn’t satisfied that anybody would care that Sum 41 would stop to exist. However the reverse occurred. Individuals began writing feedback on the band’s social media accounts, explaining how a lot their albums and songs had meant to them and the way the music modified their lives.
“I discovered that basically touching, but additionally, I had no thought,” he says. “Telling me actual tales of impression of their lives, I would by no means heard that earlier than.”
Whibley is not certain what’s subsequent for him. He says he might make extra music, write a TV present, however he actually would not know.
“As soon as I take away the security web, and I get up and I haven’t got Sum 41 to give attention to, and I am compelled to seek out one thing I am obsessed with,” he says. “That is when it will seem.”
The complete interview with Deryck Whibley is out there on our podcast, Q with Tom Energy. Pay attention and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Deryck Whibley produced by Vanessa Greco.
