Robb Flynn Machine Headin jäsenmuutoksista: ”Mielestäni kuusi muutosta 27 vuodessa ei ole kauhean paljon”

Yhdysvaltalainen groove metal -yhtye Machine Head oli vuoden 2018 lopussa varsin isosti tapetilla yhtyeen kitaristin Phil Demmelin ja rumpalin Dave McClainin jätettyä yhtyeen riitaisissa merkeissä. Yhtyettä on vuosien saatossa kritisoitu sen läpikäymistä jäsenmuutoksista, ja nykyään bändin ainoa alkuperäinen jäsen on laulaja-kitaristi Robb Flynn.

Robb Flynn on päättänyt ottaa asian pohdittavakseen tuoreessa The Robbcast -nimisen podcastin jaksossa, jossa hän totesi, että yhtyeen läpikäymät kuusi jäsenmuutosta 27 vuoden aikana ei ole kauhean paljon. Robb kertoi bändin äsenmuutoksista seuraavaa:

”I hear this a lot: ’Oh, you’ve had so many bandmember changes’. And I’m never gonna sit here and say we haven’t had bandmember changes, but we’ve had six bandmember changes in 27 years. 27 years is a really long time. We started in ’91. It’s 2020 right now. I think it’s kind of the easy thing to exaggerate — it makes a story of, ’Oh, there’s always chaos in the lineup.’ But there’s been many times when we’ve had a perfectly stable lineup for seven to 10 years, and nobody ever comments on that.

The way I look at it [is] even The Beatles… 10 years is what most bands can handle. That’s it. Black Sabbath — 10 years; The Beatles — 10 years; Led Zeppelin — 10 years. Some of the greatest bands of all time have only been able to hold it together for 10 years, and then broken up. To the point where they hated each other so much that they couldn’t even get in a room and make music anymore. And I always remind myself of that — that even The Beatles… And then The Beatles never got back together, sadly to say. And Black Sabbath took 37 years, 40 years to get back together. I think that when you look at it like that, it kind of puts things into a frame of reference.

[Drummer Dave] McClain was in the band for 23 years. [Guitarist] Phil [Demmel] was in the band for 15 years, [bassist] Adam [Duce] 20 years. Even [bassist] Jared [MacEachern] now — Jared’s the new guy; he’s been in the band for almost eight years now. You’ve just gotta kind of remember that.

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Bands do go on a lot longer than they used to these days. Bands never used to last this long. We’re kind of reaching this new phase of music where bands kind of go on forever, because they become such a corporate institution at some point, like some bands. And I’m not gonna say Machine Head’s that, but there’s other bands out there where there’s just so much money being generated that it’s not worth it for them to break up. Even if they hate each other and travel on different airplanes and stay in different hotels and can’t even speak to each other and just walk onstage and play and then leave, the band still continues, because there’s so much money being made. I don’t necessarily have an opinion about that — whether that’s good or band or I don’t know — but we’ve never really had that in the history of music. Bands either died, O.D.ed or fucking broke up, like The Doors, like Jimi Hendrix, like Black Sabbath, like — name any band.”