SÉBASTIEN LEFEBVRE of SIMPLE PLAN – She’s Right There!
An interview by Sarah Kidd.
With five studio albums to their name and dozens of music award nominations, Canadian band Simple Plan are not only wildly popular but awfully nice people!
Touted as one of the most successful pop-punk bands in the world, the five piece can spend years on the road touring each album release; the stress of which would have a detrimental effect on many a group of musicians. But Simple Plan met and formed through friendship first and foremost and credit this as one the major factors to both their longevity and commercial success.
Now here in New Zealand with their fifteen year anniversary tour of their debut album No Pads, No Helmets…Just Balls, I caught up with guitarist Sébastian Lefebvre to discuss the tour, the special edition of the alum and the definition of karma…
Well first of all Sébastien, I must say that your New Zealand fans are very excited for this anniversary tour! It’s been awhile since you graced our shores.
“I know it’s been a really long time! We’ve been looking for a proper opportunity and a proper invite; it hasn’t been coming and now we have this anniversary tour and it seems to be stirring a lot of deep nostalgia in a lot of our fans! We’ve been taking it around the world and now we’re finally very happy to be taking it to you guys!”
Anniversary tours have certainly proved very popular in recent times with all sorts of genres. Do you think it is the nostalgia that drives that or the fact that fans finally have the opportunity to hear certain tracks that they love, live?
“I guess it’s both, and to me they almost mean the same thing you know? I think a lot of our fans might have been too young last time we came to New Zealand for instance and now they finally get to see it!
And they’re very excited because yes, it’s the first time they get to see these songs live and also back then that’s the show they would have wanted to see but they probably couldn’t because maybe they missed it that one time and then when we came back it was with another album, and then another album and so now they get to see it.
And it’s so much fun, that tour has just been pure fun for everybody who comes to the show and all of us in the band; we’re having a great time!”
For those who have always wondered; there have been many versions of where Simple Plan actually got their band name from – what’s your version?
“Oh! It’s not a very exciting story [laughs] We were making demos with a producer called Graham and we were in his studio and then one day he came in and said ‘Hey I just saw this movie called A Simple Plan, and it was really good, you guys should watch it’ and we’re just like ‘Aw you know what, that would be a decent band name, we’ll drop the ‘A’, we’ll just say Simple Plan!’ – Because we had a show coming up and we needed a name – and we’re like ‘We’ll change it later’ you know?
And then maybe like thirty people came to the show, so we definitely could not change the name later because you know, those thirty people they would have got confused and forgot about us so we had to keep the name.
Later on we just figured what it meant for us to be called Simple Plan was that it was our plan to not have a 9-5 job and to not have a regular type of life, we just wanted something more, so that was the plan.”
The core group of Simple Plan are all high school friends, has that made it easier to remain together for the last eighteen years because you are more like a band of brothers now?
“Yeah definitely; I think if you’re putting a band together and you’re just going through the ads and you’re picking the best musician for this and the best for that and that’s what comes first, I think your band might sound awesome but I don’t know if you’re gonna last.
For us I think our friendship and the relationship that we have with each other is definitely one of our strengths and one of the big reasons why we’re still together you know fifteen plus years later because whenever there is something wrong we address it and nobody ever loses sight of the bigger picture which is what we have in common as friends when we joined the band.
Making music for people to hear, getting on stage, you know making this our priority, making this our jobs; this is how we make a living and this is what we still enjoy doing, getting on stage together that many years later and that’s definitely one of the biggest positive points about Simple Plan.”
The fact that the core group is still together is impressive as a lot of bands just don’t last the distance…
“Yeah, definitely I think it’s not because we haven’t hit any road blocks but it’s definitely because whenever we did we figured our way through it and then we just kept going.”
Simple Plan are classed as one of the top ranking pop-punk bands in the world, and you guys have toured with some pretty incredible names. Who has inspired you the most?
“I think a lot of different people; you know I think for us the first tour we ever did was a tour with a band called Sugar Ray and that band showed us many different things and inspired us on so many different levels. One of which was that they were so nice and they really, really took care of us. And just to be nice to everyone you meet all along your career is something that’s extremely important obviously because you never know who you’re gonna meet later on, ten years later, five years later, you don’t know.
For them to take a chance on us and to take us on tour when we were nobodies – like we started the first tour and our first album wasn’t even out, so nobody knew who we were – that was always good for us. I think that’s why we brought Paramore on one of their first tours, that’s why we brought the Plain White T’s on one of their first tours, you know just whenever there was a band that we liked it didn’t really matter if they were big or not we were just like ‘Alright let’s do this, see what happens’!
We’ve toured with Blink 182, we’ve toured with The Offspring; we’ve played some shows with a lot of different bands that influenced us when we were younger and still do now days. You try to take a little bit – we’re not stealing anything – but you always try to take a little bit from everybody’s show, everybody’s way of doin their business and everybody’s way of being in a band and then hopefully you catch on to all the good things.”
That’s a really nice way of looking at it when it comes to support bands – like putting good karma out into the world which will surely come back to you.
“Yeah I guess. I don’t know if that’s … I don’t know if that’s what karma’s all about though. I don’t know if you have to do it because you get anything back, I think if it’s meant to come back it will you know?
Yeah, I don’t think you do good things because you want good things to happen to you, I don’t see that, that that’s how it works. It’s not the higher purpose of karma.”
No I don’t mean because you want good things. I go by the philosophy that you treat everyone with respect and kindness because that’s what you should do as a human being and I believe that if you do that in life it does come back to you – not because you want it to, or because you expect it to – but because that is the natural cyclic rhythm of how life works, in my eyes anyway… [chuckles]
“That’s it! That’s what I figure too.”
Now Simple Plan released Taking One for the Team in 2016, which was your first album since 2011’s Get Your Heart On!; how did it feel to get that new material out there after what was quite a reasonable length of time?
“It was a reasonable length of time and it felt really, really good [mutual laughter]. I think we’re the type of band that when we tour, we tour for very long and some people seem to miss that. We release an album; we’re on tour for a few months before it comes out and then on tour a good two years after it’s come out. And then there’s like this weird period if we’re done touring but then summer comes along we hit all the festivals anyways, again. So we can be on tour for two and half years easy so you have to take that out of the equation when you try to measure how long it takes for us to make albums! [laughs]
But it does take us a long time, and then we usually take a break, you know after all that touring we need to re-ground ourselves, spend some time with our families and try to … you know try to recover from the road a little bit and try to relax; and then we get into writing. And then that’s where I guess we’re slow. We’re slow writers, we definitely take our time, we want every album to beat the one before and we’ve managed to do it – in our minds anyways; there’s always going to be fans that say ‘Well that is one of my favourites or that one is my favourite’ of course that’s just the way it is, that’s fine. But in our minds we always have to beat what we’ve done before or else we’re just gonna keep on writing you know?
So that is where we are slow, but then it’s always just when you’re in the studio you want to play songs live and after a long time of playing the songs live, you’re ready to write the new music! So we’re always kinda going towards the next thing.”
Speaking of albums, which is your personal favourite? What is the one album that you’re most proud of personally?
“Well, the last one we put out definitely was … it’s always a challenge for us as a band to give the fans what they want, keep writing what we want and try out new things. And that’s always hard for a band that’s been sort of playing in the same genre for many years you know? Like a lot of people say [puts on a fake voice] ‘Make your first record again!’ and we’re like ‘Well that was fifteen years ago, I’m not in the same frame of mind’
Although I do still love the first album I always wanna try new things, so in that respect I think we did a lot of the old and new on the Taking One for the Team album; but I do have to say there’s something cool about Get Your Heart On as well, like I really enjoyed touring that album. I really enjoyed playing those songs live and being in the studio and recording it so… that one’s still kinda special for me.”
I hear that a lot from bands – fans expecting them to still make records identical to their first. I am sure most fans are not in the same place or frame of mind that they were ten or twenty years ago, so to expect a band to be is a little unfair…
“Well see it this way, the way we feel about the songs that we write and the albums that we make, it’s all as intimate as most people would see the people they would be dating. So when people say ‘Oh I wish you would make music like the first album’, it’s like coming up to a person and saying ‘Hey, I like your first girlfriend better than this new one you have’ and in our minds – especially when we’ve just released it – it’s as if this new girl is standing next to us as you’re saying this [mutual laughter] so it’s always like [laughs] ‘But you know what … she’s, she’s right there!’
In the same respect, the people you’d date now, the person you’re with now, is definitely not the same type of person that you probably were with fifteen years ago!”
Exactly!
“So that’s sort of like the analogy we use a lot, but you know like obviously I can relate. As a fan of different bands, the album that got me into a certain band is always going to be my favourite, so there’s that side of it as well. So obviously, it’s all good, it’s just always very interesting to see people’s perspective.”
And speaking of the natural evolution of bands and so forth, in some ways is this fifteenth anniversary tour a final nod to the past before you continue on your particular path of evolution?
“Sure. Yeah, and we’re gonna be working on new music soon I think, we’re sort of starting to dabble with a couple of new ideas already. I mean for us it’s always important to keep the Simple Plan spirit alive in every album, in every song that we write, but there’s always a bit of past for us you know in every album that we’ve made.
But I mean at the same time we just like to go on tour, play shows in front of people that enjoy the show. So like this happened to be a good idea for us to do this show, the fans loved it you know?
I can see ourselves doing a similar concept with other albums in the future, I mean why not? I believe our next tour will be the next album tour and then we’ll see what comes after that.”
With this current tour, you guys are releasing a fifteenth anniversary edition of No Pads, No Helmets…Just Balls, the track listing of which shows that there are several bonus tracks. Do you play the bonus tracks live?
“Most of them …not. And I’ll tell you why, I’ll tell you why. Because, well first of all it’s fun to have them on the album just as a little bonus and secondly, but most importantly it’s because the first album in its integrity … it works, you know?
It just works, like we get on stage we play all the twelve songs and … actually there is an extra there [chuckles], so yeah there is a little bit of an extra during the set sure, that’s fun and then when we get off stage it feels complete you know? But then we do come back for a few hits off the other albums too…”
Oh I hope so!
“Which is something we wouldn’t not do as we have haven’t played for you guys for so long! We wanna come back on stage and play ‘Welcome To My Life’ and we’re gonna play ‘Shut Up!’, you know we still want to give you those songs, so if we played all the extras and then we did that [referring to the greatest hits portion of the show] the show would just be long and boring” [laughs]
So we play the first album, we play the whole thing, it’s amazing, it’s super fun and then we come back for just a few more of the songs you wanna here and then that’s it! And then we’ll come back and see you next time.”
So how did you select the bonus tracks for the anniversary edition?
“It’s everything that was released in that era. So it’s everything plus a couple of live songs of course, from the first album that we played on our last tour.
So you’ve got ‘Addicted’ and ‘Perfect’ the way we do it live now, and then there’s all the songs that were either on soundtracks or on special releases in like Japan with the first album, like a special B-Side from the movie. So everything that kinda happened around the first album or in that sort of time frame.”
That’s really cool – it’s like 2002 in one package. I mean its nineteen tracks on one album which is brilliant!
“It’s a lot but it works you know? There’s the album, the album’s there and then there’s … well more!”
It’s been great speaking with you Sébastien; just before we go, do you have any message for your New Zealand fans?
“Yes! First of all; SORRY it’s been so long. And also THANK YOU for waiting!
Cannot wait for this show it’s gonna be amazing and cannot wait to come back to New Zealand. If I wasn’t a family man I would come like a week in advance and really explore the country because it’s been so long, but I can’t wait to see everybody at the show, we’re gonna have a great time, nobody is going to be jetlagged, we’re gonna be on our A Game! It’s going to be super fun! That’s it – thanks for sticking around!”
Simple Plan perform tonight (Thursday, 19th April 2018) at Auckland’s Powerstation. The show is both Licensed and All Ages and limited tickets are still available from AAA Ticketing – but get in quick as they’re selling fast!
