Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley says he owes his career to mentor who groomed him

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Somewhere over the clouds Thursday morning, en route from Boston to Los Angeles to promote his new memoir, Deryck Whibley was hit by the strangeness of it all.

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For the better part of 30 years, the 44-year-old frontman for the rock band Sum 41 had kept the details of his relationship with former mentor and ex-manager Greig Nori secret. He had disclosed them to only three people, including his ex-wife, Avril Lavigne, and was confident that the full story would die with him.

The story, according to Whibley: That starting in the 1990s, Nori, then a well-respected 30-something band leader, groomed Whibley, a scrappy, poor teen from a broken home, and coerced him into a sexual relationship. (Nori denies the claims and maintains their relationship was consensual.)

Whibley didn’t fully come to terms with his relationship to Nori until last year, when he began writing his memoir, Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell, he said. As he flew over America’s heartland, he considered how surreal it was to now reckon with his buried history so publicly: “It’s still just kind of new to me,” he said.

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Walking Disaster, which published Tuesday, comes at a time when stories about male survivors of sexual abuse are gaining mainstream recognition and acceptance. Accusers are speaking out against Sean “Diddy” Combs. “Baby Reindeer,” Richard Gadd’s harrowing and complex Netflix series based on his experiences of being stalked and sexually abused, was both a commercial and critical success this year, winning several Emmys. Lyle Menendez, who along with his brother has long been the subject of public fascination after the pair killed their parents over alleged abuse in the 1990s, said in a recent Netflix documentary that he felt supported in telling his story now in a way he hadn’t before.

“For the first time, I feel like it’s a conversation where people now can understand, and believe,” Menendez said.

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But even if people are more receptive to hearing about these experiences, Whibley’s ongoing reckoning with his relationship with Nori highlights the inherent difficulties of telling these stories.

Nori and Whibley were entangled personally and professionally for nine years (Sum 41 fired Nori as their manager in 2005) – but Whibley opened up to his bandmates about the alleged abuse only just weeks ago, he said. He gave them advance copies of the book: “I want you to read it if you can, because there’s some stuff in there,” he said.

“I think everyone thought, like, s—, what did he say about me?” Whibley told The Washington Post on Thursday night. ‘Then they get to the Greig stuff and they’re like, ‘This is why.’ And nobody was really surprised.’”

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Right away, Whibley said, his bandmates told Whibley they were sorry for what he went through: I wish you would have told us; we could have been there for you.

“I was just like, it was just too hard back then. We were too young. It was just too confusing. I didn’t know what it was,” Whibley recalled. “It was just all messed up.”

Whibley’s memoir isn’t all darkness. It is full of teenage exploits and cheeky anecdotes about bandmates, romantic partners and collaborating with his musical heroes (Tommy Lee and Iggy Pop, among them). But Whibley’s retelling of his experiences with Nori is powerful as he channels his raw, adolescent emotions into passages about their early encounters. Readers of Walking Disaster follow Whibley down this path, from adulation and validation to confusion and exploitation.

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Whibley first met Nori in 1996, after a concert the 33-year-old had performed with his band Treble Charger. Whibley was 16 with a burgeoning punk band he had started with a few high school buddies, the freshly christened Sum 41. After the show, the teen – with the boldness that only youth can conjure – invited Nori to his group’s upcoming showcase. Nori was welcoming, accepting the invite and offering Whibley his phone number.

Weeks later, Nori and a friend were among the handful of people who showed up to watch Sum 41’s performance. Despite the lackluster attendance, Nori’s praise of the group was enough for Whibley to describe it in his book as “the best night of our lives.”

It wasn’t long before Whibley was hanging out with Nori regularly. By 1997, Whibley was a fixture at Nori’s shows. Nori recorded Sum 41’s first demo and, according to Whibley’s book, introduced Whibley and his bandmates to ecstasy and alcohol – their first drink was Goldschläger, its metallic glint reflective of the gilded rock-and-roll lifestyle Whibley was chasing, he writes.

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Nori became a father figure, teaching Whibley how to shave, put on a tie and drive. He introduced Whibley to cool indie film and new foods, and taught his teen protégé the foundations of songwriting. Nori would take him to drug-fueled parties and raves and, when things got rough at home, Whibley would occasionally sleep on Nori’s couch.

One night, after the pair had been partying and taking ecstasy, Nori pulled Whibley into a bathroom stall, he writes. Whibley, who had just turned 18, assumed they would be doing more drugs – instead, according to Whibley, Nori grabbed his face and kissed him passionately on the mouth.

“He said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time. I just had to do it,’” Whibley writes.

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He was confused and taken aback and, he notes in his book, too high at the time to do anything about it. Whibley, still starstruck by Nori, looked at the experience as validating. “This guy I idolized thought I was interesting enough to kiss,” he writes.

According to Whibley’s account, the relationship eventually became toxic. When Whibley tried to break it off, Nori would become angry and tell Whibley how special their connection was; how the confusion Whibley was feeling was natural; that the musicians Whibley idolized were also gay; that Whibley was being homophobic; that everyone was bisexual, even if they may not know it.

“Greig had opened my eyes to so many things already,” Whibley writes. “Maybe he was right about this, too.”

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Complicating matters further, Nori had become Sum 41’s manager – a development Whibley welcomed when he was 18 and trying to break into the music business, but that Whibley said became increasingly toxic as Nori tried to exert more control over the band – and over Whibley, in particular. (In the book, Whibley also accuses Nori of stealing credit for songs Whibley wrote, and of being vindictive, controlling and verbally abusive when Whibley would challenge him or develop close relationships to other people.)

Responding to Whibley’s claims this week, Nori told Postmedia that the relationship was consensual.

“The accusation that I initiated the relationship is false,” Nori shared in a statement to the paper. “I did not initiate it. Whibley initiated it, aggressively.”

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Both had been adults when the relationship began, Nori added. “The accusation that I pressured Whibley to continue the relationship is false. The accusation that I pressured Whibley to continue the relationship by accusing him of homophobia is false. Ultimately the relationship simply faded out. Consensually. Our business relationship continued.” (Nori did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.)

Nori, now 61 and a teacher at the Algoma Conservatory of Music in Ontario, left a note on his faculty page this week saying he was “taking a four-week leave of absence to address the recent false allegations against me.”

Fed up with what he saw as constant manipulation and mismanagement, according to the book, Whibley eventually persuaded the band to fire Nori. For the most part, he buried the experience, volunteering the story only to a mutual friend (whom he says told Nori to “back off”), Lavigne and his current wife, Ari. Both Lavigne and Ari told him that the relationship was an abusive one; both times, Whibley pushed back. However confused and manipulated Whibley had felt, he still believed he was an equal party. That the feelings Nori had for him were authentic. That the experience was as new to Nori as it was to him.

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Then, in 2015, Whibley turned 35 – around the same age as Nori when they first met. Looking back on Nori’s eagerness to befriend a high-schooler who “looked and acted like a 14-year-old,” as Whibley writes, shifted the way he saw the relationship.

Going to a teenage boy’s shows, giving him his phone number, sharing booze and drugs with him – Whibley couldn’t imagine doing any of those things himself. When a deluge of #MeToo reports came out in 2017, Whibley found the stories resonating with him.

“It started to make me think, there’s no way that it just dawned on [Nori] that he fell in love with me. It felt very predatory all of a sudden,” Whibley said. “It may have been from the beginning. I don’t know.”

When Sum 41 decided that 2024’s “Heaven and Hell” would be its final album, Whibley felt it was the right time to write a memoir. For him, it was a way of closing out that era of his life.

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So in November 2023, Whibley sat down to tell his story. For six weeks, he took to his desk at 4:30 a.m. and wrote through sunrise and sunset. Whibley drew on his memory and the extensive video archive of Sum 41’s career. “Everything was very vivid to me,” he said.

But as Whibley relived those years, he was struck by how “relentless” those troubling stories with Nori had been. Without a doubt, Nori had played an outsize role in his life and the band’s, unlocking their potential and helping to propel them to stardom. Still, gutting out the ugly parts felt “impossible,” Whibley said – the story of those formative years would be a lie.

Whibley sought out a therapist to help him talk through the process – aware of the damage his story could do to Nori, Whibley felt like a “horrible person” for wanting to come clean.

“Am I a bad person for telling my truth?” Whibley wondered. “And then through writing it, I just felt like it’s impossible to take it out. I’d just be lying at this point.”

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