Simple Plan didn’t want to wait until they were ‘really old’ to make a documentary

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TORONTO — The problem with so many rock documentaries is they too often come out as the artist winds down their career — at least that’s how pop-punk act Simple Plan see it.

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With their new career-spanning feature-length doc, which premiered this month on Prime Video, the Montreal pop-punk act says they didn’t want to follow the pack and wait until the sunset of their lives to share the ups and downs.

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“Sometimes bands … wait until super late, until they’re really old,” 45-year-old drummer Chuck Comeau explained in a recent video interview.

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“Why not kick off a whole new chapter, look back on what we’ve accomplished, and use this to start the next part of the story?”

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Luckily, Simple Plan has plenty of fresh material to talk about. The band has recently been swept up by a resurgence in popularity for their early 2000s hits, thanks in part to TikTok clips that have introduced their pop-punk anthems “I’m Just a Kid” and “Perfect” to a new generation.

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The unexpected popularity has attracted bigger crowds than ever to their shows, just as the group passes their 25th anniversary.

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“Simple Plan: The Kids in the Crowd,” from music video director Didier Charette of Hawkesbury, Ont., a town on the border of Ontario and Quebec, skirts much of the ugliness and complications of mainstream fame to focus on the band’s rise and enduring appeal.

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Members recall the odds they overcame as French-Canadian suburbanites seeking stardom in the English music market without much of a blueprint to work from.

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“There was nobody coming from Montreal, speaking French, that had done it,” Comeau said.

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“The only reference point, I guess, was Celine Dion.”

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Charette’s documentary feature debut relies heavily on archival footage in recounting the earliest days of Simple Plan’s precursor band, Reset. They formed in the mid-1990s as a group of high schoolers that included Comeau and Simple Plan lead vocalist Pierre Bouvier. While that band found some success, Comeau and Bouvier left amid personal squabbles.

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The two made amends and joined forces with local musicians Jeff Stinco and Sebastien Lefebvre to form Simple Plan in 1999. They pursued a major label record deal, eventually landed one, and then jumped the typical hurdles of the music industry.

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Some critics derided the band as too soft for modern rock, often comparing them to their brattier Canadian counterparts Sum 41. One music magazine stung them with the most backhanded of praise, labelling them “good guys, bad band.”

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Meanwhile, some audiences openly displayed their disdain, with festival concertgoers actually whipping water bottles at the band during their live sets.

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To Simple Plan, these experiences were obstacles to overcome.

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“The process of going through this old footage … was really a nice way to … give ourselves a pat on the back and say, ‘Hey, we’re doing pretty good,”‘ Bouvier said.