Buckcherry
Sorry
Frontman Josh Todd’s mea culpa gave the Californian rockers their biggest radio hit, with a song that music fans of all stripes can identify with and which has brought many to tears.
Words: Henry Yates
THUNDER ENLIGHTENING
“Me, Stevie D and Marti Frederiksen wrote the songs again and we have still great chemistry,” Todd says of Buckcherry’s upcoming new album Roar Like Thunder. “On this album we were like: ‘Let’s just fucking rock – no ballads, no covers.’ We recorded it at Marti’s Sienna Recording Studios in Nashville, where we’ve made our last three albums. When it came to writing these songs, I took inspiration from everything around me. On my days off on tour, if there’s a mall close by, I like to get a cup of coffee and just sit and watch people, listen to them interact, and sometimes I’ll pick up a phrase that resonates with me and save it on my iPhone. We’re already playing Roar Like Thunder and Come On live right now and having a lot of fun with them.”
At the turn of the millennium, a betting man wouldn’t have touched Buckcherry. The Californians had enjoyed gold sales with 1999’s self-titled debut album, home to crossover hit Lit Up. But 2001 follow-up Time Bomb was a relative stiff, and the following year’s hiatus suggested a band realising the zeitgeist was against them. “That period was when what I call ‘nerd-rock’ – y’know, the shoegazer dudes with the Buddy Holly glasses – and fuckin’ rap-rock was going on,” recalls frontman Josh Todd. “We didn’t fit into any of that.”