New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Roadrunner Records) Machine Head frontman Robb Flynn has posted the latest installment in his "The General Journals" column, and it deals with the departure of bassist Adam Duce, who co-founded the band with Flynn two decades ago.
Writes Flynn, "We had our say sitting in our jam room in Oakland. Dave [McClain] said it. Joseph (our manager) said it. Phil [Demmel] said it. We all said that we couldn't take being in a band with him anymore. That if this didn't happen, we were going to break up the band. It was hard. One of the hardest moments of my life. It was also a long time coming. We may have fired Adam on 2-11-13, but Adam quit
Machine Head well over a decade ago. He just never bothered to tell anyone… but we all knew it. Contrary to popular belief, being in a band is tough. Really fucking tough. It's the toughest sonofabitch you'll ever come across in your life and it will beat the living shit out of you 80% of the time. Many times it feels like one big rollercoaster, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. There are wins and losses seemingly every single day. Being in a band is one of life's strangest gambles."
He goes on to explain that "To a guy like Adam everything is either winning or losing. A stunning victory or the ultimate failure. There was no in-between. And while that sounds great for a TV show or an interview-sound-bite, or even a John Wayne movie that wraps up in 90 minutes... life just isn't like that." According to Flynn,
Machine Head is a group "who operate in the upper-middle-tier. For us, there are no stunning victories, only respectable wins. No ultimate failures, just better-luck-next-times. We carved a niche, we OWN that niche, but it's still just a niche. Nothing wrong with that...No matter how un-happy or fed up he got, quitting the band would be seen as 'losing' or a 'failure.' Truth be told, he was sick of it. Sick of touring, sick of recording, sick of practicing, sick of looking at album artwork, sick of being-on-a-team-but-never-getting-the-ball, sick of yearning-for-the-honeymoon-to-resume when 20 years deep it never does. Sick of never quite hitting the big-time, sick of carving the niche...sick of caring."
Read the whole thing: https://www.facebook.com/MachineHead/posts/10151346478933823
Whether you're a
Machine Head fan or not, you'll almost certainly learn something about what it takes to be in a band, and to keep it alive.
