Q21:49Deryck Whibley: Why Sum 41 is disbanding after 27 years
Deryck Whibley had a nagging feeling for the past five years. He wanted to leave Sum 41 — the band he formed with his buddies from Ajax, Ont., in 1996 — but he didn’t want to be ungrateful.
“I’ve always had these thoughts and desires, and wondering, ‘Will I ever do something else? Do I have more to offer in life?'” he tells Tom Power in a Q interview. “Every time I had these thoughts of maybe doing something else, I would bury them.”
Whibley knew he was lucky to play music for a living and loved being in Sum 41. So he continued to work with his four bandmates on the album they just released, Heaven :x: Hell.
It wasn’t until they finished making the album that Whibley made a decision.
“I sat back and I listened to it, and I thought, ‘This to me feels like the work is complete now,'” Whibley says. “This double record — one side pop-punk, one side heavier — from beginning to end, it encapsulates everything musically we’ve tried to do over the years.”
But just because Whibley decided to shut down the In Too Deep band didn’t mean that everyone else knew. He took almost a year to tell his bandmates after his realization, choosing to inform them via email.
Whibley wanted to carefully craft his words, as well as give his bandmates time to think about what he said, without them feeling the need to respond immediately.
When the five of them got on the phone to talk about this, it was a “loving and supportive” conversation.
“It’s not a bitter breakup,” Whibley says. “That maybe makes it even more sad because we all really care about each other. It probably would be easier if we were mad and angry and hated each other or just never wanted to see each other again.”
The next step was telling the public. On May 8, 2023, Sum 41 told their fans on X that they would be disbanding — but not without a farewell tour.
Whibley wasn’t convinced that anyone would care that Sum 41 would cease to exist. But the opposite happened. People started writing comments on the band’s social media accounts, explaining how much their albums and songs had meant to them and how the music changed their lives.
“I found that really touching, but also, I had no idea,” he says. “Telling me real stories of impact in their lives, I’d never heard that before.”
Whibley isn’t sure what’s next for him. He says he may make more music, write a TV show, but he really doesn’t know.
“Once I remove the safety net, and I wake up and I don’t have Sum 41 to focus on, and I’m forced to find something I’m passionate about,” he says. “That’s when it’ll appear.”
The full interview with Deryck Whibley is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Deryck Whibley produced by Vanessa Greco.