“I never got tired of trashing hotel rooms”: Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley on his new memoir, Walking Disaster

Back in the pop-punk heyday of the early aughts, Sum 41 was one of the biggest bands on the planet. Deryck Whibley, its spiky-haired frontman, was known for destroying hotel rooms and dating fellow tabloid staples like Paris Hilton and Avril Lavigne. After growing up below the poverty line in Mississauga, Whibley was touring the world and living the dream, but backstage it was more complicated. In his new memoir, Walking Disaster, Whibley tells the full story, from the band’s behind-the-scenes antics to the sexual abuse he alleges he faced at the hands of his former manager. Here, Whibley talks about his book, becoming famous in the tabloid era and Sum 41’s imminent final gig.

Your memoir is called Walking Disaster. Did you consider any other titles? Maybe something a little less self-critical? I didn’t, actually. I’ve always liked that title. The song was off the Underclass Hero record. It was about my teenage years, when I was not getting along with my parents, couch-surfing, going out to raves and doing drugs. For a book that would look back on that time, it just made sense. What made you decide to put your life story to paper? The idea has come up a bunch of times over the past six or seven years. At first, I wasn’t interested. I just thought it was kind of boring.

Your story is a lot of things—boring is not one of them To me, it doesn’t seem so wild and crazy. Lots of high school bands make it. I’ve read Tommy Lee’s book, Slash’s book, Ozzy’s book. Compared to those guys, I wasn’t sure I could measure up. But, when we decided we were coming to the end of Sum 41, I thought, Okay, this is a good time to wrap everything up.

Before Sum 41 was a world-famous band, you were kids trying to make it in Toronto. Is there an early local gig that stands out? They all stood out back then. We were so excited just to get a show. We didn’t play Toronto so much as the outskirts. We played Bolton all the time. Call the Office, a little bar in London, was another big one. They were kind enough to have us open for a bunch of big punk bands: Less Than Jake, Ten Foot Pole, Down By Law. Before that we’d been playing basements and backyards. And then you celebrated your first record deal at Toronto’s venerable strip club For Your Eyes Only. We’d been to strip clubs before, but not with that kind of money. People were throwing bills around—bills were in the air! We’d never seen anything like that. We were just starting to take off at that time, and our record company president said, Go out and destroy the world. As long as you get it on tape, we’ll pay for it. We almost burned down our tour bus the first night we had it. Once, we showed up in Texas for a show, and the night shift guy at the hotel knew who we were. We convinced him to trash the room with us. His manager fired him in front of us the next morning as we were checking out. Did that ever get tiresome? Did you ever feel like you had to destroy a hotel room when really you just wanted to sleep? Never once. We loved what we were doing. We probably carried it on too long because it was so much fun. Looking back, there was one time when we were in our late 20s, during an Australia tour, when it got way too out of control. We took literally everything out of one of our rooms—not just the mattress but the bed frame, not just the TV but the full armoire. Somebody from our touring party threw a glass table at the maid, and it shattered everywhere. The police came. It was a bad scene.

Usually when I interview someone who has written a memoir, I ask them which part was the hardest to write. In your case, I’m assuming it was the section about the sexual abuse you allege you endured at the hands of your childhood idol and former manager Greig Nori. Was there a version of the book where you didn’t include these revelations? For a long time I thought that was something I would take to the grave. But, when I started writing the book, I kept arriving at these moments that I had blocked out for so long. I decided that I would write it down and decide later if I wanted to include it. I figured it would be a valuable thing to do either way, but in the end, it felt like leaving it out would make the whole book a lie. That relationship was so intertwined with our first four records and, really, everything I did from 1996 to 2005.

There has been such a culture of silence around sexual abuse in the music industry. Were you motivated to push back against that? That’s not what I was thinking about at first. When I was writing, I was just thinking, This is going to be horribly embarrassing, but I will deal with the fallout. It was my wife who said, “You know, this is going to help a lot of people.” Sometimes I’ve thought that nobody else could ever understand what I went through. But that is not the case. Even with the very small number of people who have read the book at this point, about half of them have said, “I went through something like that too, and I’ve never told anyone.”

[Nori denies these allegations and has retained legal counsel to respond to them.]

You share a lot of stories about other famous people—your fling with Paris Hilton, for example. Do you give a heads-up in that scenario? Like, “Hey, Paris, I’m writing about how we used to hook up and do copious amounts of blow?" I did. About a week ago, I had my publicist reach out to her publicist, and I sent a personal note. I did that with a few people. For some, I actually sent a copy of the book.

Did you send a copy to Avril? I did.

Any feedback? No. Not at this point.

Your relationship was a huge deal back in the day. Did you two stand a chance under that much scrutiny? I’m a pretty private person, and she was too. We did our best to avoid the attention, but that was a time when online gossip and paparazzi culture was really exploding. It was the Brad and Angelina era. It really felt like total mayhem, and I didn’t know how to handle myself. You know, suddenly there are cameras in your face and people are shouting things at you to try to provoke you. I never got used to it, and I never liked how I came off as angry or disrespectful or rude. I would see other celebrities handle it better and think, Man, why can’t I be like that?

You were mostly in LA at that point. Was it any better at home in Toronto? At first Toronto felt normal, but then the paparazzi came here too. You couldn’t come out of a hotel in Yorkville without people following you around.

These days you are a father of two. Does your four-year-old understand that his dad is a famous rock star? He knows what I do, but I don’t think he understands that other people know as well. My mom showed him videos of Sum 41, and he’s been obsessed ever since. But he doesn’t know the song titles. He knows “In Too Deep” as “The Diving Board.” Has he inherited his father’s famous spiky hairdo? He’s had a mohawk for as long as he’s had hair.

In 2014, you got sober after being hospitalized with liver and kidney failure. Did you do anything to mark ten years? I think I was on tour. I’m not really someone who counts the days, but ten years is pretty cool. I’m proud of that. My life is so much better now, so much happier. I have more energy onstage at 44 than I did at 24, but I worked really hard for that. My mind is so much clearer than it was back then.

Sum 41 has had a big resurgence in the past few years. Do you credit that to anything in particular? When I got out of the hospital ten years ago, I was like, I’m building this band back up—this is not the way the story ends for me. And that’s what we did. Even before Covid, we were playing larger crowds again. And then coming out of the pandemic, we released “Landmines,” which is the biggest song we’ve ever had. Our fans have really stuck with us. I feel like nostalgia has become a big thing in music, and that has helped us a lot with radio play.

And yet you have decided to call it quits. Is this a real farewell tour or a Cher-style farewell tour? No, it’s real. I’m having an amazing time right now, but I also can’t wait for it to be over. I’m so excited to try something new. I don’t have any plans, which is so exciting. Anything could happen. Or nothing, I guess. But I tend to think positively.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.