While losing a bandmate can sometimes cause a band to implode, Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley said last year's departure of guitarist Dave "Brownsound" Baksh wasn't a huge surprise, and hasn't really made that much of a difference in the group's dynamic.
That doesn't mean it wasn't upsetting.
"It was hard because we didn't want Dave to quit, we wanted him to be in the band," Whibley said. "It wasn't hard (from the standpoint) that he didn't write anything. So, creatively, I knew nothing was going to change. And I'm not saying that to take any credit away from him. I'm just saying that because that's the truth. I didn't want him to quit,
but he did quit and that's reality, and we had to learn how to deal with it. And we're dealing with it."
Whibley said the only real surprise was that it took Baksh, who has since formed the new metal-reggae group, Brown Brigade, that long to leave.
"We thought he was going to quit on our first record, like in 2000 or 2001. I remember we had a meeting and on our first headlining tour, we were in Austria, and we said, 'Dave's going to quit any day.' I mean this is when our first single, Fat Lip, came out, it was peaking. And we thought he was going to quit then. It was just never really his thing. I mean, he's doing his own thing now, he's the lead singer and the lead guitar player, and he writes the songs."
Whibley says there are no hard feelings.
"Our relationship is the same as it's always been, where we don't really talk very much but we get along if we see each other. And we happened to see each other every day on tour. But we never talked. When we went home, I never got a call from Dave and I never called him, and we didn't e-mail or anything. We never spoke until we saw each other. Now we just don't see each other. It was all of us. He was always just like that."
