WSOU Exclusive Interview: Robb Flynn from Machine Head

Rohit: I’m Rohit from WSOU and I’m here with Rob Flynn from Machine Head, how are you doing today?

Robb Flynn: I’m good how about you?

Rohit: I’m great. So the tour kicked off a little while ago. How is that going?

Robb Flynn: It’s been awesome. We’re doing an evening with Machine Head. It’s about two, two and half hours of this journey through 20 years of Machine Head, it’s super fun man. It’s really cool. Everyone’s coming out, it’s been selling out left and right. It’s been a blast, we’re really stoked.

Rohit: So I know you had that previous tour lined up with Battlecross, Children of Bodom and Epica, and then when that got cancelled due to the album. You decided to just do a tour by yourself. What was the reasoning behind just going out on your own?

Robb Flynn: You know I think for a lot of it, especially in America, the last time we headlined in America we took out Suicide Silence. That was in 2012 I think. Before that, the last real headliner that we did where we played a full headlining set was in 2005. Everything else was co-headlined. We did a co-headliner with Arch Enemy, we did a lot of support shows, and we did eight tours of America on The Blackening. Seven of which were support for bands like Metallica and Hellyeah, or Mayhem Festivals. This time around we just want to do our thing and not have to worry about time restrictions. Y’know just make it an event around us. We are a band that has eight albums, we have this collection of music, this body of music we want to play. We want to mix up the usual sets and do something different.

Rohit: Yeah especially because you just had a new album come out. It’s a good time to showcase the new music with the old. Just talking about the new album, how was it leaving Roadrunner and going to Nuclear Blast because I know with Roadrunner, especially recently, a lot of their metal collection has dropped and I know that was a large reason behind you guys switching labels.

Robb Flynn: Y’know, we almost resigned with Roadrunner a couple years ago. We were probably almost two days away from doing it, and then the bloodbath happened, or at least that’s what we called it [laughs]. Warner Brothers came in and literally fired a hundred and something people, they closed down every office in the world. Seven fully operating offices. Another round of cuts came, then another round of cuts came. Even Monte Conner got fired, y’know Monte was the guy who-

Rohit: He basically signed every metal artist on Roadrunner.

Robb Flynn: He basically built that label. The reason that anyone even cared about Roadrunner Records was because of the artists he signed. While other A&R guys signed bands that made money, like Nickelback, the label was built on metal bands. For us, even though there were some great people working there, people that we had known for a decade and really loved, it just felt different. Then Nuclear Blast had the brains to snatch up all the good people from Roadrunner [laughs].

Rohit: Monte’s over at Nuclear Blast now, right?

Robb Flynn: They picked up Monte and Mark Palmer out in the UK, and they picked up a lot of people from Europe. We went out and met with a lot of those guys, and Monte was really happy with it. We went and met with everyone else throughout that team. It really worked like that old Roadrunner spirit. Granted, the times were different, but it just had that same feeling that we were doing it for metal and not for pop charts. It just felt good man. Here we are now. Three times Monte Connor had signed us. We’re pretty stocked man.

Rohit: So listening to the new album, it’s a lot more emotional than previous albums. What was the inspiration going towards that direction? It’s still incredibly heavy, but it is a lot more melodic and emotional parts in many of the songs.

Robb Flynn: I don’t know if it’s any more or less emotional. I feel like it’s just a new batch of songs. I think when you write music there is this myth that you know what you’re gonna do, you lay it all out, and you go "okay this is what we’re gonna do and we just gotta go do it." It never really works out that way. In fact, the world will just show you how opposite it’ll make you go when you try and lay out plans like that. I think a lot of it is just letting it flow and seeing where the music takes you. In my experience, that’s when the best music comes out. You reach this moment when you’re- kinda scared almost. Where you’re saying "I don’t know if we should do this," or "is this too crazy?"

Rohit: Yeah I saw for the album that a lot of it was live tracked instead of just going over and perfecting it in studio. It just shows that whatever you feel with music might turn out the best.

Robb Flynn: Yeah, and if it doesn’t work, which often times it doesn’t, at least you went down that road. Maybe that road opens down another path for you to take, you never know, it’s such an arcane process. But as long as you trust your gut and know that things will be okay, it will be okay.

Rohit: Talking more about music now on a different end, right now internet streaming is really big. I remember seeing that you said that you’re a big fan of internet streaming services like Spotify even though they can really hurt record sales of an album. What is your stance on that? Do you think streaming is the way to go for people to access music?

Robb Flynn: Everybody wants something different. For me, I’m a gypsy. My life is permanently travelling, I live out of a backpack. For me, to have everything right there on my phone is unbelievable. I can pull up any song that I want to hear. I have the whole history of recorded music at my fingertips for $9 a month. I think that it’s amazing. I think that most people forget that YouTube is the number 1 music streaming service in the world. Far bigger than Spotify, far bigger than Deezer. Everyone is using YouTube. You don’t hear anybody bringing that into the conversation. Most people that I talk to will say "Oh, yeah I YouTubed it." Somehow Spotify has been demonized, there is no difference. Everyone wants to do that. And why wouldn’t they? It’s super convenient.

And some people buy it. For us, we came up in the album era. Buying all these big double vinyl that split open. For us, we still enjoy that. We wanted to sign with a record label, Nuclear Blast, who had the ability to do these killer packages. Watching a lot of the Indiegogo crowdfunded campaigns, just the things that bands were offering to fans, y’know. I think Protest the Hero was offering some really bizarre stuff that was so interesting. I think one of the things was like a postcard from the bass player once month for a year for like fifty bucks. They offered twenty of them and they all sold. I think that there is that line where people want something, but they want something more than just a CD, they want something extra special. For the longest time at Roadrunner we always put out these really rad European Digipacks, and in America it was just a plain old CD. We were fighting them (Roadrunner) constantly saying "We gotta give our American fans this special stuff." With Nuclear Blast it’s amazing because for the first time we’ve been able to have everything equal across the board, even pricing wise. We have these ultra-deluxe versions y’know, we have this incredible box set with this chrome Machine Head diamond on it. It comes with a flag and a media book. We got guitars. We got regular CDs as well. We got different colored vinyl. Our fans are just eating it up. It’s so cool to have these things because it just makes it so much more special. For me, I have an iPhone, but one of the things that’s the coolest thing about the iPhone is the box it comes in. It’s so perfect y’know, it opens up and it’s got this suction to it. You feel like you’re opening up a f***ing diamond. We want our fans to feel like that. If you’re gonna spend your hard earned money on any of the physical versions of the album, we want it to feel special. Even the regular CD version of the album has a twenty eight page booklet. It’s the biggest CD booklet ever produced. Our biggest concern was if it would even fit. Our fans have really reacted to it, they are really stoked on it. It’s been awesome man. Nuclear Blast has been really killing it.

And I think with Spotify, or even YouTube, is just another avenue for people to discover. If you get hooked on the music, there is all this collectors stuff for you to collect.

Rohit: I definitely agree. Going back to the packaging thing, unboxing stuff might be one of my favorite things and I don’t know why. Even watching people unbox things gives me the biggest happiness in the world. That noise when you rip the plastic off a vinyl is one of the most satisfying noises in the entire world.

Robb Flynn: Oh yeah, I know right?

Rohit: Definitely. So going back to the tour, I’m a huge baseball fan so I saw when you were back in Arizona, Randy Johnson came out. Who is the coolest person to ever come out to one of your tours? Either recently, or ever before?

Robb Flynn: We got a collection of sports dudes to come out before. We had guys from the Raiders come out before, we’ve had players from the Dodgers, Randy Johnson obviously. For me, and I think Phil and Dave are probably the biggest sports fans in the band. They are watching ESPN fairly religiously, whereas I’m more of a casual sports fan. I follow the Raiders, and that’s pretty much it. But, it’s cool that these guys come out. Randy Johnson is a Hall of Famer. Tony La Russa, his wife is a massive Machine Head fan, she started coming out to the shows with Tony. He came up to us and said: "If I could bottle the energy you have and give it to my players, I would." It’s such a weird but cool feeling. I think in some ways, at least when it comes to me, I’m not the biggest sports fan, so I don’t go all sports crazy on them, and I think they like that. I think they appreciate that. It becomes more of a conversation about normal stuff rather than things that I’m sure they would get sick of talking about. So Tony La Russa and Randy Johnson are just some of the cooler cats to come around. Tony La Russa is a good friend. He does a charity event every year for animals and he’s asked me to perform acoustically a couple times, and I have.

Rohit: So you mention that you’re a Raiders fan, I’m not a Raiders fan but I’m from the Bay Area too, I’m from Fremont-

Robb Flynn: Oh cool. You’re from Fremont? I lived there for a bit, like six years.

Rohit: Oh, I didn’t even know that.

Robb Flynn: Yeah I went to high school at American High. Hence the song American High.

Rohit: I didn’t know that. I went to Mission, so old school rivals. I consider myself probably one of the luckiest people when it comes to music. Having the Bay Area metal scene, and then moving over to the New York/New Jersey and their metal scene, I don’t think it gets better in America. Where do you think you’ve played the best shows just with fan response, and everything like that?

Robb Flynn: Y’know it’s pretty even. At this point it’s been pretty even. I think that the major cities usually have a leg up on everybody because attendance is bigger, it’s a bigger market. The New York’s, the Philly’s, the San Francisco’s, the Chicago’s. But everywhere too, man. I think the fact that we’ve through bullheaded perseverance, we’ve outlasted everybody, we’ve survived three musical trends and every flavor of the moment there is and we’re still here standing. There is this respect that people have for us now. It’s pretty awesome to feel. Like it’s really cool to feel that, man. Like, we just did a tour over the summer, it was a Killers and Kings’ tour, and we literally did not hit a single major market. The whole point of the tour was to do f***ing Arkansas and Minot, North Dakota, and Toledo, Ohio, and Springfield. All these places that are three or four hours away from any major city. Just little, small towns. We were playing 500 cap clubs. We just wanted to get out there. We’ve got all these fans that are starving for music. People were just so grateful. Just so grateful. For a lot of them, it was the first time seeing us, they always wanted to but it was just too far for them to travel. It really taught us a huge lesson. We really got to get out to these smaller places. Even if it means scaling down and taking less money, it’s important.

Rohit: I know that you’re busy, especially today. You have a concert out in Philadelphia, and then you’re heading out to play New York tomorrow so I’ll leave you with one last question. If you could pick one album, and nothing from your own discography, to listen to for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Robb Flynn: Hmm, one album. One desert island album. F**. Probably Paranoid from Black Sabbath. It’s a good one.

Rohit: Thanks for joining me today. Good luck at your show tonight. I’ll definitely be seeing you tomorrow. Thanks for your time.

Rob Flynn: Good rapping with you dude.