Five minutes alone: dan donegan
Disturbed’s co-founder on building houses as well as a fanbase, and losing friends too young
Hammer time
“For me, working outside as a carpenter building houses every Chicago winter would be miserable! It was a great trade to learn and there’s a great living from it but it’s something that I knew I didn’t want to do forever. We all had pretty good career jobs but it wasn’t what we wanted. It has always been music for us. We’ve always had that work ethic. I think there’s something that comes from that Midwest, blue-collar ethic of, ‘Get off your butt and go to work. Go do things!’”
The sound of the suburbs
“All the good clubs, all the historic places in Chicago didn’t want to have anything to do with us. The scene in the city was more alternative, because you had early successes like Smashing Pumpkins and Veruca Salt. We just started building it in the suburbs, playing local, neighbourhood bars. We kept fighting and building a fanbase until the premier clubs in Chicago couldn’t deny us any more ’cos we were packing everywhere we were playing.”
It’s like a black mirror...
“When David [Draiman] made those comments about Evolution being our Black Album, we view that as the measuring stick for great rock or metal albums. We love Metallica – Ridethelightning, Masterofpuppets, ... And Justiceforall, all those – but that was just a huge commercial success for them that saw them reach a bigger audience. So I think when he makes these comments he is saying that albums don’t get much bigger.”
Evolution not revolution
“We are a band who is going to continue to grow and push each other, and go down roads that some people might not expect. You can’t please everybody. Some people hated the Black Album because it wasn’t as hard as ...And Justiceforall. They are gonna feel that way about us. But we are always going to branch out with new things. It can’t be the same riff regurgitated and played over and over.”
Surfing the nu-metal wave
“We were a part of that because we came out at the same time, so a lot of bands were lumped into that ‘nu’ label, and I’m not shying away from it; we rode that wave, and we were a part of some of those big festivals with a lot of those bands, but we never really fit because we were just guys who grew up on classic metal and classic rock bands. Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, all those bands . . . Metallica.”
In loving memory
“With Chester [Bennington, Linkin Park], our albums both came out through Warner Bros in early 2000. Chester’s voice was great. He was a great frontman. We had done a lot of touring with them in the earlier days and it was nice to see them explode as they did. He was a very talented guy. And Vinnie Paul... Our first big tour was Ozzfest 2000 in the States and Pantera was on the bill. I remember meeting Vinnie and Dimebag and the very first time we met them they treated us like we were brothers. I remember partying every night to the point where we were crawling back to the tour bus after the shows! Me and Mike [Wengren], our drummer, ran into Vinnie in Las Vegas when we were making this album. I’m just glad that the last time I saw him it ended with a hug and, ‘I love you, brother’ I feel like I’ve always got that last good memory of him.”
Disturbed’s latest album Evolution is out now on Warner Bros. See disturbed1.com for more details
“All the good clubs, all the historic places in chicago didn’t want anything to do with us”