During a recent interview with WSOU, Mike Kroeger, the bassist for post-grunge powerhouse Nickelback, opened up about the band’s album covers, and how creating an album cover is not their strong suit. 

Kroeger also talked about his admiration for Storm Thorgerson, creator of iconic album covers for legendary bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, and more.

The interviewer stated that the band’s album covers are so diverse from an album to another. While ‘Feed The Machine’ album has a dark tone with a futuristic image, ‘No Fixed Adress’ has a light theme with a rising sun.

Here is what the interviewer asked Kroeger about the album covers:

“When you’re writing an album, do you think in your head, ‘Okay, I kind of know what I want the cover to look like?'”

Mike Kroeger answered:

“That’s a good question, I never get asked this. The concept of coming up with an album cover is like the most arduous, painstaking thing I think we do.

When it comes to writing songs and recording – playing on the record and stuff – there’s no problem. Like, touring, everything, we know how to do all that shit; that’s what we do, and we’re good at it.

But when we have to get into the realm of visual arts, that’s when we turn into real psychos – we get really weird about it. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s because that’s not our medium, but we read so much more into it than we should.”

Kroeger also talked about a moment he had with Storm Thorgerson, who passed away a few years ago. Thorgerson created the album cover of ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ and many other successful album covers. Kroeger spoke about a conversation with him, which made him question himself and the album whether the album cover needs an icon to create it. Kroeger also praised Thorgerson and his team’s work.

Here is what Kroeger said about Storm Thorgerson:

“Over the years, we talked with the guy who did ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ and some other Pink Floyd covers – he’s passed a few years ago, his name was Storm Thorgerson. I talked to that guy on the phone one time, and I remember just thinking to myself, ‘What the hell am I doing here? Do we need an icon to do the cover for Nickelback record? Yeah, I don’t think so.’

It just kind of occurred to me that it’s kind of absurd because obviously, ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ and things of that nature, to me, there’s a level of sort of all-encompassing depth and concepts that you definitely want to have a visual component to. But a loose collection of rock tunes and kind of semi-power ballads, I don’t know, it seemed kind of crazy.

I kind of felt it was self-indulgent to talk to somebody on that level because if you look up that guy, Storm Thorgerson, and if you look at the album covers he’s made.

Oh my god, I think there probably is an art installation that should be on tour around the world – if it isn’t already – because the iconic images of that guy and his team are just untouchable.”

You can reach the source of the statement here.