MACHINE HEAD Frontman: 'I've Played Shows To 500 People That Were F**kin' Life-Changing'

Roadrunner Records recently conducted an interview with guitarists/vocalist Robb Flynn of San Francisco Bay Area metallers MACHINE HEAD. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Roadrunner Records: There's a lot of crowd interaction on [MACHINE HEAD's new double live album, "Machine Fucking Head Live"]; you've become really known for that. Were you more self-conscious about that in the band's early days? Is it tough to learn how to address the audience and stuff like that?

Flynn: Yeah, I mean, you definitely learn. I still learn. Doing METALLICA dates in the round, I had to throw away everything I'd learned to that point and create a whole new way of communicating and trying to reach people, 'cause all the jumping and circle pits didn't really work, because there's only about five rows of people in the round, and everybody else was in the seats going way up. So you're always learning. For me, it came — I was introverted as a kid, but I was kind of an introverted extrovert. [laughs] I was always going out for talent shows and school plays and wanting to be the main guy, so when I got up on stage, I loved it. Music helped bring me out of my shell, and I think the band that I was in previously, I was primarily the guitar player, so having that guitar player performing onstage vibe really helped give me confidence, and a few years later when I was a singer, it was a pretty natural transition. By then I was ready to command the crowd.

Roadrunner Records: Does it feel different to play a show you know is being recorded, or do you just shove it out of your mind and go do the show?

Flynn: It's better to shove it out of your mind, because you start thinking, like, "I gotta play good," and stuff like that. It's the shows where you're not even thinking about that where you can just go out there and it happens. And those are the ones that are fun. Being recorded — that whole festival run we did, almost every show was being recorded. Almost every show was ending up on YouTube, so at some point you don't even think about it, you just go do your thing and some nights you have good nights, and some nights you have shitty nights. [laughs] That's just the way it goes.

Roadrunner Records: Does it change your approach when you're playing a prestige venue, like Madison Square Garden in New York or some famous festival overseas? Does that get in your head at all?

Flynn: Nah. For me, it's like, "Wow, we're playing the Garden, this is cool," but it doesn't matter. Once you step on that stage, it's all about the energy you're getting — or not getting, in some cases. It just becomes about what the crowd is. People always ask, "Do you like playing festivals to 100,000 people, or do you like playing clubs to 500 people?" To me, it doesn't matter. It's all about the energy, the back-and-forth between the band and our crowd. I've played shows to 100,000 people that sucked. Like, literally 100,000 people just stared at us. And I've played shows to 500 people that were fuckin' life-changing, like a religious experience. And the opposite's true — I've played shows to 500 people that sucked, and shows to 100,000 people that were some of the most incredible things I've ever done. So for me it doesn't matter — size, venue, nothing — it's just about the energy, the people that came there to fuckin' sing every word and lose their fuckin' mind and get loose and take their inhibitions and throw 'em away and not care if the person next to 'em thinks they're a weirdo for screaming their head off. Fuck them! They're a weirdo for not screamin' their head off!

Read the entire interview from Roadrunner Records.

"Imperium" live: