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Interviews : “The Australian fans have been great to us.” – An Interview with Dan Donegan (Disturbed)

By on November 9, 2015

 

Disturbed

Dan Donegan – Disturbed

Disturbed is with us once more! After a four year hiatus they have released their highly anticipated sixth record ‘Immortalized’, and they have also recently been announced as one of Soundwave’s headliners in the new year.

The writing process was different to say the least for the Disturbed camp, with a lot of secrecy and deceitful tactics on social media they managed to keep the creation of ‘Immortalized’ a secret from pretty much everyone in the whole world. I told Dan that I wanted to congratulate him on the fact that Disturbed made it a fifth consecutive number one on the Billboard 200.

“Thank you! I mean, that’s pretty shocking, pretty overwhelming, just hearing you say that, we couldn’t even imagine it happen one time, let alone five times consecutively. It’s really a tribute to the fans. I mean, really, they’re the ones that are showing their loyalty to this band and to rock music in general. We are just really fortunate that our fans are some of the best in the world.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auuqlcom6tM&w=560&h=315]

I was curious about if they felt a sense of relief because of this, and if Dan has scanned social media for reactions on the new album.

“Yeah, I mean, I usually don’t really put much thought into certain things throughout the career, awards and stuff like that. At this point we knew that it was starting to become a part of history for us. So at that point I wanted it to go to number one because, I guess for a little bit of reassurance. We took four years off off touring and recording, and the fans still showed up, they were ready for us. That to me was very overwhelming. Their loyalty, that they waited patiently and they were ready when the album came out.

In the beginning I went on Youtube and I was a little bit curious, it was four years away, it’s a long time in the music business to go away and hope that people didn’t forget about you. Do they like what they hear? I just went online to see what they were connecting with. I wanted to see their reaction to our cover song, Sound of Silence. I wanted to see if they were liking the turn we took with it. There is another song, Save Our Last Goodbye, that to me, I wrote that one, it was very personal for me. I had a friend who passed away during the hiatus. He died of pancreatic cancer. Young guy with a wife and three kids. Within a 10 month period I watched this terrible disease kill him right in front of us. The cancer tore his body apart in ten months, from a guy who was our buddy, hanging out at BBQs, seeming healthy, and then lying in a hospital bed next to a Christmas tree in his house. It was a tough moment to see that, I wanted to see if someone else had their own stories connecting with that song. So I go on Youtube to read comments to see if somebody found a connection themselves with it. Was there an experience of just losing somebody at a young age, and just feel like they’ve been cheated? It wasn’t fair, he was a young enough guy who left his wife and kids behind. His kids didn’t have a chance to have their dad, his youngest daughter was five years old and I felt pissed off about it. I wanted to share that story in a song, to see if other people have their own connection to it as well.”

 Whilst on the subject, I asked Dan about the family life, if they ever felt like quitting full stop to spend more time with their families.

“I know we were looking forward to the down time, and focusing on family time too. You have to figure that one out. Music is in our blood too, so it’s finding that balance, I can’t walk away from it and stop doing it. I’d miss it too much. This is our drug of choice! The music is in us. But just finding that balance because over the years, my kids are 11 and 8, David’s son just turned two. He was the last one to become a dad, and he got married during the break too. It’s nice to be home and have those family moments, since it’s obviously important for anybody. But, those certain things when you’re on the road. You give up a lot of milestones in your kids’ lives to be able to do what we do on the road. I missed my son’s first birthday because we were in Germany with Metallica playing for 80 000 people. That’s the trade-off. “Okay, now I’m not going to win father of the year”, but also at that point in our career, I have to be out there doing it for the band too, and put food on the table for my kids. You figure that out, during this break it was nice to have some big moments with our families.”

We then proceeded to talking about Soundwave, I wanted to know if he was looking forward to playing in the Australian summer heat. At this point was easy to notice how much he’s looking forward to getting back out on the road again.

[laughs] “For sure! For a couple of reasons. One, it will be freezing here in Chicago, it is terrible here in January. It’s a great city, but it’s the perfect time to leave here. And we’ve also always wanted to be part of a big festival like Soundwave in Australia. We’ve put in a lot of time in Australia since the beginning of our career. Coming there playing small clubs, just building it up over the years. We’re paying our dues just like anybody else. It’s nice to see the growth over the years. For us to be at the point in our career where we’re one of the Soundwave headliners, the Australian fans have been great to us. To have a number one in Australia is a great milestone for us. And it’s one of my favourite countries to come to, and I’m not just saying that because I’m talking to you! I love being there, love the people, it’s just a beautiful place and we always have a great time. We’re excited because we’re coming back with recharged batteries. It’s the start of the tour, coming there, so we’re fresh and we’re hungry, and we’re energetic and we can’t wait to bring it!”

Mike Portnoy said in an interview leading up to the first Soundwave announcement that they might invite other bands/band members to play with Metal Allegiance on stage at the festival. I wanted to know if Disturbed would be interested given the opportunity.

“Possibly! Portnoy’s a monster. He’s a great guy, and a friend of ours. We’ve toured with him in the stage when he was drumming for Avenged Sevenfold. We spent some time with him back in the day, he’s obviously one of the best drummers out there. He’s phenomenal. I’m not sure really, it depends on what we’ve got going on besides our own set, if we have a lot of press and things like that. But you know, John, our bass player, played with Portnoy in Adrenaline Mob during our hiatus, so they’ve spent a lot of time together.”

John Moyer has been extremely busy with other musical projects, and as a consequence Dan recorded all the bass parts for the album. I wanted a statement regarding John’s place in the band as I’ve read quite a few speculative posts on social media regarding his status in Disturbed.

“It is really just to do with, going about things a bit differently this time around. John was spending a lot of time with Adrenaline Mob and he had a lot of projects going on. But, when we were writing for this album we didn’t have a timeframe. This time around it was just “let’s not even say anything, let’s just write songs, we’ll spend a little time with a few different producers to see who we connected with”. Once we decided on Kevin Churko in Las Vegas, we didn’t know how much time that would be. We just wanted to make the best album we could make. However long that takes it takes. We just went in with some ideas. That put me in a position of laying down the bass tracks while we were caught up in the moment of writing. John is a great bass player and he is the bass player of this band. It was just different circumstances. The writing of Disturbed have always been me bringing music to David and to Mike and the three of us just kind of being in a room, working on these ideas. So none of that has changed in our process of who writes, it’s more the recording process that changed.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nW-IPrzM1g&w=560&h=315]

The album making process of Immortalized was unique in many ways, it still amazes me that the band managed to pull it all off the way they did. I asked Dan if he thought that not having any pressure from the outside world made the album better.

“I think the thing that made it better was that we just completely let our guard down. We came in with a completely open mind. We’ve always kept open minds in the past, but a lot of times when we’ve entered the studio we’ve had finished ideas. This time it was more “let’s not get too attached to this, let’s spend a bit more time in the room together.” That’s what really made things better. The technology of having Pro Tools and Dropbox is a good tool to get ideas back and forth to each other, especially since we’re living in different states, but the real chemistry happened when we were in a room together, like the bands in the 70s and the 80s, being in a room, being a band. I would send ideas just to get the other guys going on some ideas themselves, but we kept an open mind, so that it developed in the moment.”

It seems like Dan really liked talking to me, because we were rapidly running out of time and I felt like I had so many more questions to ask him, alas, we only had time for two more. I wanted to know what the Sidewave situation is at the moment, if he had any inside information for me.

“The only thing I was told, we have the three shows in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne and then one in Auckland, New Zealand as well. So it’s going to be a quite short trip. I don’t think we can do other states because of clauses. They won’t allow us to play anywhere else. I’m hoping that later in the year that we make a second trip. I know for sure we’re going to push for that because it’s nice to do Soundwave, but I’m sure that there are other territories in Australia that we would like to come back to that we’ve played in the past.”

Dan mentioned very briefly early on in the interview that he loves Australian wine, so I wanted to conclude our chat with more light hearted question: “You get to bring one bottomless bottle of any kind of alcoholic beverage that you want to this island. What do you pick?”

“Okay, since I’m in the Australian theme of things I’m going to say one of my favourite Australian wines, Penfolds Grange. We went to Penfolds vineyard in Adelaide, two times we’ve been there. Great bottle of wine and I think that would be my choice!”

Secure your Soundwave Festival tickets from www.soundwavefestival.com.

SATURDAY 23 JANUARY 2016, BRISBANE

SUNDAY 24 JANUARY 2016, SYDNEY

TUESDAY 26 JANUARY 2016, MELBOURNE – AUSTRALIA DAY PUBLIC HOLIDAY

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About

Martin is an aspiring music photographer/videographer. He is originally from the southern parts of Sweden and now he's living in Sydney, Australia. Thanks to his older sister, he got into Rammstein at the age of 9, and since then he's been into all types of metal/rock. He loves to combine photography and music, but also filming concerts and produce live material. Follow him on Twitter and check out his website.