Sum 41: Brownsound Wanted Out To Pursue Metal

The biggest buzz surrounding Sum 41 for the past year, aside from frontman Deryck Whibley being wed to pop starlet Avril Lavigne, was the departure of guitarist and founding member Dave "Brownsound" Baksh.

Both parties have been fairly tight-lipped about the split, but Whibley shed some light on the subject when ChartAttack caught up with him.

"It's a hard topic to talk about only because I have to choose my words carefully," he says. "I'll say something and fans will be writing these emails to our site, asking why I'm such a dick about Dave.

"The reality is, it didn't change anything creatively when Dave left. The first thing I want to say is that I did not want him to leave. I wish he was still in the band, but it was his choice. He quit. He didn't want to do it."

The three remaining Sums recently completed their fifth album, Underclass Hero, the first without Baksh.

"We had to move on and figure out how to do it," elaborates Whibley. "To be honest, it became easier because there were only three people in the band, and I was the only guitar player, so I didn't have to do anything for anybody but myself.

"Although Dave is a far better guitar player than I would ever be, I didn't have to write things that I felt Dave was gonna wanna play. It was real easy. I could just do what I wanted to do, and it freed me up a lot."

According to the frontman, Baksh had negative feelings towards the band's music even during their early days.

"He quit because he didn't want to keep playing our type of music. I knew that. We knew that before he quit. He had issues with our band back in 2001. We thought he was gonna quit back then. That was always in the back of my mind. 'Is Dave gonna like this? Is Dave gonna wanna play this?'

"Even with the last record, his enthusiasm was so low that it brought us all down. It was a negative vibe in the studio. The fact that it wasn't there made it really easy. The best case scenario was that Dave would have been as excited as us, and been into it as much as us. I would have loved that, but that's not reality."

Though most fans might assume that the group's new material lacks the metal elements of Chuck due to Baksh's absence, Whibley maintains that Brownsound was even unsatisfied with that record.

"Our most riffy album, our heaviest album, our most 'metal' album, was the one he had the least enthusiasm for. When we did Chuck, we were always asking him to come up with riffs and do something, so we could do it together, but I just think he wanted to do his own thing.

"I don't think it came down to the music necessarily as much. When we did the metal stuff, he didn't want to be a part of it. He just wanted to do his own metal stuff."

Though not a particularly happy moment, the guitarist leaving freed the group to do what they wanted without having a negative presence during the writing and recording of Underclass Hero.

"Nobody wasn't into this, and the three of us were more into it than anything we'd ever done," Whibley recalls. "Dave even said, 'I know what you guys want to do with this record, and you won't be able to do it if I'm in the band. I will be a thorn in your side because I don't want to do it.'

"We didn't want him to go, but nobody could be half into this record, whether it's Steve, Cone or me."