Chad Kroeger, the co-founder, lead singer and songwriter for Nickelback, was ordered yesterday to pay $25,000 a month in interim spousal support to his former girlfriend, Marianne Goriuk by a Supreme Court of British Columbia judge. Goriuk, 40, who is four years older than Kroeger, was a hair stylist in Edmonton when she met Kroeger. They began living together at the end of 2002 until September 2009 in Kroeger’s home in British Columbia and have no children. The $25,000 monthly interim support payment is lavish for most Canadians – part of it is to maintain a home for Goriuk’s parents and a stable of horses owned by Goriuk.
Goriuk alleges that during their relationship she contributed labour and domestic services to the properties owned by Kroeger that resulted in Kroeger becoming rich. She also alleges that their relationship was a “joint venture” whose purpose was to acquire assets for their future security and that, pursuant to the joint venture arrangement, each of them contributed to the accumulation of assets and, correspondingly, to the accumulation of Kroeger’s wealth. She is seeking spousal support payments of $1.1 million a year and an order for the transfer to her of every asset owned by Kroeger wherever situated worldwide. She earns $12,000 per year and he earns $9.7 million per year.
Essentially, Goriuk’s claim seems to be that the success and wealth Kroeger acquired during their relationship was because of her contributions, and that Kroeger has been unjustly enriched by those contributions. As a result, she claims an entitlement to Kroeger’s assets and continued spousal support payments even though the so-called “joint venture” is over.
The allegation of a “joint venture” between Goriuk and Kroeger is interesting. A joint venture is a temporary strategic commercial association between businesses or partners for a very specific objective. The parties who form a joint venture each remain independent legal entities. They join their efforts, as well as resources, to further their commercial objective, allowing them to increase their business potential in a way each could not attain alone. In this case, Goriuk’s theory will have to be that Kroeger could not have attained his success and wealth without forming a joint venture with her and having the benefit of her contributions.
With respect to the contributions by Goriuk to the “joint venture”, Kroeger says that Goriuk was not musically inclined, spent no meaningful time at his studio, didn’t make efforts to get to know the other musicians involved in his business and contributed nothing to his business pursuits or his creative writing process. With respect to Goriuk’s alleged domestic services to Kroeger’s homes, he says that he had paid domestic help and that Goriuk never provided any domestic services. She was, in his words, merely his “companion.”
According to this article in USA Today, Nickelback and Chad Kroeger’s success were accomplished the old-fashioned way (i.e. hard work) that included:
- relentless touring (which Kroeger says Gorniuk resented);
- radio appeal;
- a sound for the times; and
- talent.
The talent and appeal of Nickelback (and Kroeger) is evidenced in this “Photograph” video which has over 13 million hits on Nickelback’s YouTube site. Every Canadian who grew up in a small town and went on to improve their life (like Kroeger), can connect with this song.
The song “Photograph” is somewhat biographical of Kroeger’s life growing up in Hanna, Alberta. In it, he says: “We said some day we’d find out how it feels to sing to more than just the steering wheel.” True to his ambitions, Kroeger taught himself how to play guitar and through hard work, now sings to more than just a steering wheel.
That ambition paid off in other ways – a year and a half after the alleged joint venture with Gorniuk ended, Billboard’s Top 100 listed Nickelback as the #1 hard rock artist, and their album “Dark Horse” as the #1 hard rock album.
In his book “Talent is Overrated”, author Geoff Colvin writes that the greatest innovators in a wide range of fields, including music, all have at least one thing in common: they spent many years in intensive preparation before making any kind of creative breakthrough. Creative breakthrough never comes suddenly.
“Whether it was the transistor or the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” album or the cell phone or Picasso’s Les Damoiselles d’Avignon, it always follows a long period of extremely hard work, and in most cases the creative products themselves were developed over a significant period. Great innovators are roses that bloom after long and careful cultivation.”
Colvin writes that researchers have found that there is a ten-year ramp-up rule that applies to outstanding performers in any domain. He cites the example of Harvard Professor Howard Gardner who studied seven of the greatest innovators of the early 20th Century, including composer Igor Stravinsky, and was struck throughout the study “by the operation of the ten-year rule … should one begin at age four, like Picasso, one can be a master by the teenage years; composers like Stravinsky and dancers like Graham, who did not begin their crearive endeavors until later adolescence, did not hit their stride until their late twenties.”
By the time Nickelback released its early alums in 2000 – 2002, Kroeger had been immersing himself in his music for at least 12 years. By the time he hooked-up with Goriuk, he was acquiring mainstream success. During that time, Goriuk appears to have been styling hair in Edmonton.
Ultimately, the trial judge will have to decide whether Chad Kroeger bloomed as a musician under the cultivation of the hair stlyist from Edmonton, or whether he had the personal drive, ambition and talent to become a rock ‘n roll legend all on his own.
The trial is scheduled for August of this year.