Interview w/ Darrell from FFDP!!!

Recently I got the chance to sit down with Darrell Roberts of Five Finger Death Punch, while he and the rest of the band were out on tour with Disturbed. This is what Darrell had to say...

Thanks for taking the time to sit down and talk with us Darrell.

No problem

So how's the tour with disturbed going so far man?

Amazing dude, every show has been sold out. People are just, It's just way more intense than last year, people are just singing along to every song. The reaction is just phenomenal. We do a part of the bleeding now where we actually stop playing the music and just let the audience sing it like super loud man its really cool.

So you guys are going to be sattaling up for the first ever rockstar mayhem fest with bands like machinehead dragonforce and mastodon just to name a few how psyched are you guys about that?

Super dude, a band in our position with one record out. basically we've only been around for a year and a half, you know, you couldn't really ask for anything better than the situation that we have right not. Were out on the road with Disturbed, getting all tight and ready then we get a couple weeks break to rest up and then we hit the mayhem tour with bands like Slipknot, Disturbed, Dragonforce and all those guys, it's gonna be amazing, it's gonna be hot as hell, its outside but we did the same thing last year on Family Values so we're pretty used to it, its all good.

So you guys have pretty much toured non-stop since the last time we got to talk to you guys are there any fan worthy stories, that you dealt with personally, that come to mind?

Um fan worthy stories?

Yeah anything that you want the fans to hear about, anything that was comical to you?

Dude, stuff happens just all the time. I mean the family values tour was like a giant carnival in the parking lot everyday. You play in the afternoon at like four or five o'clock for thirty-five, forty minuets and then you bus driver would need to sleep so your bus call every night would be like one a.m., two A.M. so the whole parking lot was nothing but, like, us, Trivium, Hell Yeah, you know Vinnie Paul. Just bottles and bottles of Crown and Jaeger going around. It was just a rolling party every night man. Trying to think of just one story, I didn't think I could do it. I always say if the story is really, really good you probably won't remember it.

Right on man, the best stories are never really remembered

Exactly, if you can remember the story, it probably wasn't all that great.

We can all pretty much see from the album as to what you brought to the band but what did the band bring to you, what made you feel FFDP was the band you needed to be in.

The bottom line was The bleeding. I heard that song and knew the power and the emotion. Just the impact that a song like that would have on people, I just knew if we could get a really good label behind us and we could get good radio partly behind us and we could get that song on the radio. I just knew that the band could have a real good chance of blowing up so. I mean I love the whole record and its exactly the kind of music I really wanted to play. I've been in WASP and other bands like that and as much as I really enjoyed it and I did I enjoyed being in those bands but it just wasn't the kind of music I wanted to play, I was going to put my own band together after I left WASP, and working with Jeremy, the drummer from Five Finger, he was going to come in to record some stuff  together with me and then he brought this CD over and he was like yeah I've been working with this guy Zoltan that I met and we've been putting down some rough tracks and he started playing some of if for me and I was just blown away man, I was just like, Goddamn man, and then when they started rehearsing they realized that their second guitar play just wasn't really the right guy for it. He was a shredder, he was a great guitar play but he just wasn't really right for what they were doing. So he called me up and asked me if I was interested, he said I know you want to do your own thing but I think it would be beneficial, I mean he didn't even finish his sentence, I was just like Yes! Okay. I was like count me in dude, we rehearsed a few times without Ivan, because Ivan was up in Denver, because that's where Ivan is out of, got the  music real tight which was exciting, then when Ivan came down, with in the first minuet of hearing that guy belt out those vocals, I knew I had done the right thing.

So when was the first time you ever picked up a guitar and what got you into it?

My Grandfather got me really interested in guitar, I think it was almost a genetic thing for me because he was real musical, he played guitar, he was like a country guitar player, one of those chicken pickin guys. For as long as I can remember, even as an infant I remember sitting on the kitchen floor and he would sit at the kitchen table and I was always just fascinated by that I just always enjoyed sitting there watching him play guitar. When I was like eleven or twelve he gave me a guitar and I started playing but once I heard Crazy Train, the opening riff of crazy train that's when I became
completely obsessed that when I just quit racing BMX and going to the skating rink and hanging out with my friends. I just locked myself in my room for like twelve hours a day, you know, I just wanted to be Randy Rhodes. That album, that and blizzard of oz and Diary of a madman, completely obsessed my mind, that's all I thought about.

What are some of the bands or even not musical related things that most influenced you and the way you played guitar early on?

Yeah, like I said my Grandfather was a huge part of it, early on I was really into Skynyrd, my brother he used to listen to Nazerath and Skynyrd and stuff like that. I loved Steve Gains and of course I got into Eddie Van Halen, and I was a total Randy Rhodes freak and Michael Shanker. Early Metallica stuff, I loved Hetfield,  the way he played rhythm, just completely changed the whole way I played guitar. The first time I heard Creeping Death, I didn't even know what Instrument was making that sound, it was just so heavy and brutal to me. I was like what is that, is that just a guitar? So yeah he had a huge impact on me, then when I got older I got more into the blues, Jimi Hendricks, Stevie ray Vaughn, just people like that, you know just pure blues guys Robin Trower, shit like that.

So a real round mix?

Yeah, somewhat. I like all kinds of music man, as long as its good, as long as they're doing it for the right reason, as long as they believe in it, its coming from the heart. I like Country, Bluegrass, Metal, Classical.

Have you ever played anything other than guitar?

Not really, I mean I'm a decent drummer, we used to rehearse at my house so I always had a drum set at my place so I used to go in and play drums every once and a while, you know, so I'm decent. I've done some recordings and demos and stuff where I played the drums on'em. I've sang in a few bands, I was in a band in Hollywood where I was the front guy and I would sing and play. I was in a Metallica cover band called Alchollica and I was the James Hetfield guy in that so I guess I'm a decent singer, but guitar is really my deal.

So do you have a favorite saying?

A favorite saying?

Yeah, like a catch phrase. Just something you say or use all the time?

Man, we have a whole bunch of them that go around but I don't know...SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH. We use that one a lot.

Alright, its my belief that everyone in the world has Five vices, Five things that they cling to like an addict, Five things that define them as a person. Name your Five vices.

Five vices, uh, Ass, Tits, uh beer, Marlboro lights and uh. I don't know what else is there, another vice. I wish I had some time to prepare for this...did I already say beer? Oh yeah, Crown Royal!

Crown Royal, spoken like a true metal head.

Exactly, nothing like a cold beer and shot of crown. Sometimes I even think about it while I'm playing a set, none of us drink before or during a show so its like two more songs and I get to crack open a cold beer and take a shot of crown.

Right on man, I'm a cold beer and shot of Jameson kind of guy.

Yeah, cool man.

I've seen and heard a lot of fan interaction in the form of contests and give aways and so on, I also know that as a band you guys are very methodical in terms of strategy. Where does such fan to band interaction come to play in terms of band strategy?

DR: We just feel its really important. Early on we realized that we had these fans that were more than your typical fly by night fans, these kids were like, I mean before the record even came out, these kids were sending us pictures of Tattoos and writing us stories about how the lyrics and The bleeding was just changing their lives. It just reminds me of some of the fans we had in WASP. there is a few bands like WASP, DANZIG or
Moterhead that have these die hard fans that just stay with them forever, its almost like a European mentality, when they love something they love it forever. Not like in America where they like something for like five years and then move on to the next big thing. We were just getting the feeling from all the messages we were getting early on that we had the ability to really touch people and have this die hard base that will stick with us and give us some longevity. So we always just thought it was important to interact with them, to this day we still go onto our MySpace and read all the messages and we try to respond to them its getting harder to but still we try and our managers being The Firm too and they're amazing, they have a lot of the ideas for contests and my guitar company B.C. RICH is super cool to. They have given us like seven or eight guitars now for us to use for give aways at magazines and at shows, you know, and The Firm is always coming up with these cool ideas, like Say now, where we can call and leave messages for our knuckleheads can listen to and we're all about that. anytime we do a show you'll find us after the show, you'll find us out in the crowd just talking and mingling with people, its just really important man.

It's really cool that you guys consider that to be such an important virtue.

Well, we live in a time where everything is with the click of a mouse its instant gratification, so its really hard to have people dedicated to you when you can just click on to the next thing so we understand how important it is to have these people, be interested in what we're doing and we want to keep them here.

I want to take a second to talk about the new album, you have a re-release coming out for the way of the fist and it has three never heard before tracks on it correct?

Yeah, well its two tracks and then an acoustic recording of The Bleeding.

O.K.

It's been available on I-tunes but we're going to go ahead and put it on the actual disk and then re-release it but yeah there are two originals on it the new single 'Never Enough' and another song called 'Stranger Than Fiction'

So Never enough is the new single that you picked?

Yeah, we went in and recorded a bunch of stuff, a bunch of cover songs and stuff. I'm sure those will see the light of day some point. We just had a few months off, we had to cancel the all that remains tour because Ivan needed to rest up his voice, and we just wanted to stay productive, luckily we got to go into Jonathan Davis' studio because Korn was over in Europe. So yeah we were lucky enough to get into his studio and track some songs and when everybody at the label heard Never Enough they loved it, they thought it was really strong song and wanted to make it the second single but we ran into the problem that it wasn't on the record though so people that already bought the record are going to be pissed so The Firm came up with this really cool push technology where people can actually go to our website, 5FDP.COM/BONUS, and they could download the song for free.

I saw where you guys had that set up as a free download, that's a really cool idea.

Yeah, and the other song if you already have the CD that will be on Itunes for a dollar or you know, you could just go out and buy the CD again, that would make us really happy.

Okay so here's the really big question. Everywhere you see or hear the name FFDP the term "True Metal" is sure to follow. All of the band has been questioned on your thoughts and feelings to wards the label and the general retort is the band feels that its not only an honor but also a responsibility, do you guys still feel that ways today and to you feel that you have up held said responsibility?

Absolutely, I feel even more strongly about it today. That's the cool thing about our management company The Firm, we're more of a partnership, we have creative control, when we handed them the way of the fist CD, they didn't touch it, we were like here is the record and they just released it. I mean later on, I will be honest, we had to go in and edit a little bit. The bottom line is no matter how real and true you want to be there are just some radio stations and programmers out there that will not play you if you have to many screams or whatever they just literally won't and if you want to be successful and continue to tour and make this a real career then sometimes you have to be willing to bend sometimes so we did do a clean version of The Bleeding with somewhat cleaner vocals in it but yeah trust me every record that we do will rip you a new asshole. I promise our second record will sound nothing like Nickleback.

To visit Five Finger Death Punch's MySpace page click here

By. Tim Fisher

TimF@getinmagazine.com