With 15 million records sold, a Grammy Award nomination, and millions of tickets sold worldwide, pop-punk rockers Sum 41 have firmly cemented their status as rock legends. Yet, they surprised fans by announcing that 2024 would be their final year as a band, following the release of their eighth studio album, Heaven :x: Hell. On their farewell world tour, the ‘Tour of the Setting Sum,’ we caught up with Cone from the band at Nottingham’s Motorpoint Arena to talk career highlights, the making of the iconic “In Too Deep” video, and how they plan to fill the space that music once held in their lives.
How does it feel to be on your farewell tour?
A little surreal cause its hard to imagine Sum 41 will be no longer after Jan 2025. We’ve been doing this since the 90’s full on so its hard to imagine not doing this anymore. We’re trying to take it all in though.
The music video for ‘In too deep’ struck a chord visually for the alternative kids, seeing the jocks being beaten. What are your memories of making the video?
Ya it was in 2001 that we shot the video in LA with Marc Klasfeld. It was a 2-day shoot and probably the most expensive video we’ve ever done hahaha by far. It was the closest thing to a real movie shoot that we ever did. The video was based off the 80’s movie “Back to School” starring Rodney Dangerfield and so we shot the video at the same pool they shot the movie at. Was a crazy experience seeing it all come together with the divers and all our fans in the stands etc. Good memories.
You have such a dedicated fan base across the world, what are you going to miss from being able to interact with them through touring and putting out music?
Ya we are lucky to have fans all over the world and not just in our home country or something. I will definitely miss playing in front of all our fans everywhere and also seeing how excited people get when we come on stage and play certain fan favourite songs etc. We also have a lot of fans that we know personally now that come to our shows all the time and fly to different countries to see us so it’ll be tough to say goodbye to those fans as well.
As a band, you’ve constantly put out music over the past few decades, what’s going to fill that space once you aren’t recording together anymore?
Well music and this band is really the only thing aside from a few side projects that I’ve personally done since 1999 so I think I’ll probably take a little breather for a few months to let the whole crazy Sum 41 life sink in. After I catch my breath I don’t see myself doing something other than music really but you never know. I plan on just doing things that are exciting for me, things that make me happy and things that I love. I don’t have any concrete plans yet although stuff is already starting to pop up……..
This farewell tour seems to be a real celebration of you all together in the band for one final time. What’s been a highlight?
Ya I agree its a celebration of this band and how long we’ve been able to be a band even through the toughest of times together. Not to be dramatic but I think every show has been somewhat of a highlight cause its the final time in that particular city and we can see the joy our fans get out of seeing us play. Not only that we can see the emotional end to it all. When we walk off stage every night we can all feel the love.
When recording the latest album did you know it was going to be the last or was it something developed over the time of recording?
No I don’t believe anyone knew it was the last album. It just felt like is was going to be another Sum 41 album and we’d go out and tour the world and then get ready to do it all again in a few years. I will say that this album is a perfect departure for us though cause it really showcases pretty much everything this band has done in its career from the beginning till now. We’re all proud of this album.
Photography Garry Jones
