Brian Vollmer: “SCUM 41” – When Sum 41 Covered “Rock You” by Helix

Brian Vollmer: When SCUM 41 were on the top of their game they re-recorded Rock You for the movie Fu Bar. Keith Brown of Aquarius suggested that I go to Toronto and get up and do Rock You for their encore when they played there. I told him I would, as long as this was a 100% sure thing, to which he assured me it was. So…I took the day off from teaching and Lynda, myself, and Archie drove to Toronto, eager to meet the band and sing the song onstage.

When we got there the band was just crawling out of their tour bus. I went over to say hello and they blew us off, acting like they really didn’t want to meet us. I thought that was weird, but I kinda put it in the back of my mind ‘cos I was excited to be there and was looking forward to getting on a big stage in front of a big crowd. We went inside the arena and a lot of people who worked for Helix in the past were on their road crew-John Sheffield, John Erickson, etc. Everyone was saying hello and yelling out “How’s it going Brian?” Lots of good vibes….But when I went to the road manager’s office he dismissed us with, “Oh, the band didn’t get time to learn the song-they aren’t doing it. I can give you tickets for the show-it starts in about 6 hours.” The weasel couldn’t even look up from his desk and tell me eye to eye. I told him to shove the tickets up his ass and added that we were leaving. On the way out the back door the band was up on stage, f**king around. They all saw us leaving and didn’t even have the balls to apologize for dragging our asses all the way to Toronto for nothing. When I got home I contacted Keith Brown at Aquarius to tell him what a bunch of jerks his band was-HE AGREED.

Anyway, since then they’ve been knocked down a peg. Looks good on them-what goes ’round comes ’round. Interestingly enough, here’s their set list: LOL. Gimme an R? I wouldn’t give them the piss off my boots if they were dying of thirst in the Sahara Desert.