David Draiman still finds what to be disturbed
about
For Disturbed frontman, his band’s first
appearance in Israel is more than just another show.
May 31, 2019 08:54
Jerusalem Post
Israel News
Culture News
DISTURBED,
WITH David Draiman (third from left), will be making their Israel debut on July 2. (photo credit: CAA LONDON)
It’s a tossup as to who’s more
excited about the upcoming concert in Israel by famed American hard rockers Disturbed
– its fans or its lead singer David Draiman.
The 46-year-old frontman with bald pate and until recently – an impressive
array of imposing chin piercings – is one of the entertainment world’s few
outspoken defenders of the Jewish state. His usual intense but articulate
manner of speech is peppered with excitement over the prospects of his first
show in the Holy
Land.
“I can’t wait!
It’s going to be a special night,” said Draiman, who has visited the country
numerous times. “We have some really incredible surprises in store for the
Israeli crowd. I always look forward to coming. You can’t but help feel
different when you’re in Israel and experience the connection and the
energy. It’s truly an amazing place.”
Draiman, who was raised in Chicago, has close to 200 relatives in Israel, including his brother Ben, also a
musician, and his grandmother, and many of them will be on hand at LivePark
Rishon on July 2 when the band makes its Israel debut.
“It’s a huge backstage list, it’s going to be insane,” laughed Draiman during a
recent phone interview from Glasgow, where Disturbed was performing in the
middle of their European tour. “We’re going to be spending an entire week in Israel after the show. My wife and son are
coming out so they can spend time with the family, and I’m going to take the
band all over – to Yerushalyim, Ein Gedi, old Yaffo – and give them a proper
introduction to our homeland,” he added, using the Hebrew name for Israel’s
capitol.
The same voice heard belting out Disturbed angst-ridden lyrics used to regularly
inspire teenage yeshiva students in Chicago as the shaliach tzibur for shaharit,
maariv and High Holy Day services. When Draiman met with the Post during a
vacation in Jerusalem in 2011 with his then-girlfriend and now wife – former
model and professional wrestler Lena Yada – he revealed that if the devil’s
rock & roll hadn’t stolen him away, Draiman may have continued the path he
was on as a young adult toward achieving smicha (ordination as a rabbi).
Instead, he’s become world famous with Disturbed. Along with band mates,
guitarist/keyboardist Dan Donegan, bassist John Moyer and drummer Mike Wengren,
they’ve sold millions of albums since their 2000 debut and, in 2015, cracked
the mainstream with a passionate version of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound
of Silence” that shattered the heavy metal stereotype the band had fostered.
According to Draiman, the song’s success, rather being a warhorse that he has
to pull out at every show, has had a liberating effect.
“That song’s success was a surprise, but it was in no way, shape or form a
burden,” he said. “We knew we had something special when we recorded it.
Listening to it, we know how much it affected us, and we could only assume
other people would find the same connection to it, and thankfully we were
right.”
“Stylistically, it opened up opportunities for us,” he continued. “Danny and I
had talked about doing an acoustic record for years, and ‘The Sound of Silence’
gave us the confidence to start our creative process for [2018 album] Evolution
by concentrating on ballads and acoustic material first as opposed to starting
with the heavy stuff right out of the gate. Those songs, like ‘A Reason to
Fight’ and ‘Hold on to Memories’ have become some of the pinnacles of our live
show, and certainly ‘Sound of Silence,’ which I think fans would riot if we
didn’t perform.”
The song’s success has also enabled the band to expand its fan base, which in
turn opened up new markets for them, including Israel. Draiman explained that until now, it had
been financially unfeasible for Disturbed to appear here.
“The band knows I’ve wanting to do this our entire career, but it was just a
matter of working things out logistically,” said Draiman. “Touring is very
expensive, and I can convince the guys to come over and not make money, but I
can’t convince them to come over and take a loss. There’s not a lot of ways to
bridge the physical gap between Israel and other possible venues. I can’t play
the UAE at the Dubai Desert Rock Festival because they won’t let me in the
country with Israeli stamps on my passport, and I’m not going to get a new
passport and pretend I don’t have family in Israel just to appease them.”
“It becomes complicated, but this time we were able to bridge that gap by doing
a bunch of shows as a lead up that made sense geographically and
strategically,” he said. “And we’re finally popular enough in Israel to play a venue like Rishon.”
IN RECENT YEARS, Draiman has toned down his online presence and public defense
of Israel – including deactivating his Twitter
account – preferring to show his support in other ways.
“I don’t engage publicly anymore, unfortunately it invited all kinds of
negative attention,” he said. “Twitter is a cesspool and there’s no point in
engaging there – it’s a playground for packdogs and juveniles in a contest to
see who has the better insult.”
“I do all kinds of behind the scenes stuff now. I sit on the advisory board of
the Creative Community for Peace [an entertainment industry organization],”
Draiman said. “We get heavily involved in trying to make sure that bands who
have shows coming up in Israel or are considering to perform there feel
comfortable about and understand the pushback is just a lot of noise. Whatever
temporary negative backlash there may be is outweighed by the passion and
exuberance and loyalty of their Israeli fan base.”
The pushback against Israel and the rising tide of antisemitism comes from both
the extreme Left and Right, according to Draiman, who calls it “scary times.”
“It’s terrifying, worse than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I never thought I
would see the day when people were literally being attacked once again, when
antisemitism is becoming mainstream,” he said, citing the infamous New York
Times cartoon earlier this year, alt-Right marches and continued antisemitic
statements by Louis Farrakhan.
“‘Never again’ has never had so much meaning and yet people are forgetting it,”
he said. “People are even questioning the validity of the numbers behind the
Holocaust. It’s mind-boggling to me.”
However, Draiman doesn’t lay the blame at the doorstep of any one source,
including US President Donald Trump.
“It’s not just the Trump era,” he said. “The country was divided before him,
whether people want to admit it or not. I think that Trump is given too much credit.
The hatred exists with or without him. It continues to fester and not enough is
being done to bring people together. We’re way too polarized and partisan these
day, and I don’t think laying the responsibility at the feet of Trump does it
justice.”
With his chin piercings gone (“it was time,” he told one interviewer recently),
a seven-year-old son, a defunct Twitter feed and a nearly 20-year-career in
full swing, Draiman has shifted his priorities from the global to the personal.
“Having a child changes your entire world. You start prioritizing differently,
for yourself, for your livelihood. You become a lot more protective and
defensive and try to wield what you were given as responsibly as possible,” he
said, adding that the changes have begun to be reflected in his lyrics. “Age,
experience and family will continue to push you in different directions. I have
different concerns now, and not to be cliché, but we evolve. As an artist, I
try to write from the heart.”
And finally, Israeli fans, like the rest of the world, have begun to take
Disturbed to heart. On July 2 in Rishon, don’t expect to hear many sounds of
silence.
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