There were recent times when Deryck Whibley might have wondered if he'd ever pick up a guitar again. There were moments where it was touch-and-go if he'd even breathe again. The Sum 41 frontman almost drank himself to death. Some people say that more figuratively than literally, but Whibley ended up in the Intensive Care Unit and came so close to the mortal abyss that he now has permanent physical damage.
That could not stop him from being his rock star self, once he inched his way back from the edge. He's here in Prince George tonight at CN Centre to show fans what a new lease on life looks like in the flesh and scratching frets.
"I'm pretty good," said Whimbley in a phone call in between concert dates on their new 13 Voices tour. "There's still some physical problems. I have permanent nerve damage in my feet from the experience of being in the hospital for too long and just not moving. Really the hardest thing was learning how to walk again, because I couldn't for a long time. I still have balance issues, the nerve damage in my feet will cause me to be a little off sometimes. I still do everything I've always done, but sometimes I'll feel something sort of like vertigo."
He must have been a handful for the healthcare professionals all around him during his prolonged stay in hospital. Just because he was close to flatline at times doesn't mean he was dead to the creative process.
"I was writing and recording the whole time," he said. "My days were pretty full. I'd wake up, do physio, work out, work on my health all day and by evening I'd start to work on the music and that would take me to 2 or 3 in the morning. I'd go to sleep, wake up in the morning, do it all again like that every single day. That's where all these voices came from - no-stop, no escape, all on my own, stuck with myself.
He was hearing 13 voices and more, and he had to communicate with them.
"They are all part of my own voice, but when I was making this album I was in a different headspace than I'd ever been in. I'd just got out of the hospital, I was in recovery, there'd been kidney failure, I had so many problems going on and I was trying to rebuild myself. But at the same time I was writing an album and everything was just so new and weird and scary and I had all these voices in my head all the time. It seemed like I could never really escape my own head."
The magnetic pull of the band got him through. He insists that was not a nostalgic point but an important medical factor. Having something to look forward to was an enormous gift he knows he was lucky to receive.
Tonight he gets to share it, pay it forward, receive it back in a creative loop that can only exist between bands and fans. He has been to Prince George a few times in the past, but it will feel in many ways like the first time. It'll be Whimbley and his Sum 41 mates, Danko Jones, Bleeker and American rock star buddies Papa Roach, all at CN Centre in one big guitar collision.
