The Offspringista lähtöpassit saanut rumpali Pete Parada avautuu saamistaan potkuista tuoreessa haastattelussa

Kirjoittanut Arto Mäenpää - 5.3.2023

Suomeen kesäkuussa kahdelle keikalle saapuvan The Offspringin rumpali Pete Parada sai potkut yhtyeestä vuonna 2021 ilmaistuaan yhtyeelle varsin selvästi vastustavansa koronarokotusta ja kieltäytyneensä ottamatta sitä yhtyeen kehoituksista huolimatta. Nyt Parada on antanut potkujensa jälkeen ensimmäisen haastattelun The Culture War With Tim Poolille, jossa on kertonut ajoista jolloin sai potkut yhtyeestä. Parada kertoi haastattelussa kertoneensa oman näkökantansa koronarokotteisiin yhtyeelle ”Let The Bad Times Roll” -albumin teon aikoihin mutta ei itse uskonut, että se olisi ollut bändille niin iso asia kuin se lopulta oli. Parada kertoi kokemuksistaan seuraavaa:

”Basically, spring 2021 we put out a new record [’Let The Bad Times Roll’]. And so we spent all those months in the spring. I was out in L.A. with everybody, interacting. [Everything was] totally fine. [We were] recording music videos, promotional stuff all through May. Everything was fine; no issues. And then in June, all of a sudden COVID protocol controls, whatever you want, kind of comes to a head. And I get a phone call from their manager. It was the most unnecessarily abusive, threatening call I’ve ever received — just screaming at me of, ’You need to do this.’ And I was, like, ’Well, you know, I talked to my doctor about it. I have a medical exemption.’ [He] didn’t care. It didn’t matter.”

”It wasn’t a secret that I was not lining up to do this. I just assumed we were gonna have a conversation about, like, ’Hey, here’s my feelings. Here’s where I’m at with things.’

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”I had had gentler conversations with them about my feelings and my thoughts where I was at and my medical history and my concerns about going into this. And the last we left it was, ’All right. Sounds like we’re gonna have more conversations about this. To be continued.’ It felt like we had opened a conversation that was gonna keep going,” he added. ”And then, a week later, out of nowhere, I get this call that’s just annihilation. He made it very clear by the end of that conversation that I was to get the shot or I was out… That was the gist of the whole conversation.”