Ever since someone described the Dave Matthews Band to me as “music for lawyers”, I’ve been unable to shake that image of the group from my mind. As such, it has come as no surprise that the band’s frontman has revealed his feelings towards fans of heavy metal, explaining that he believes them tobe “unattractive” people who drink a lot.
Since the Dave Matthews Band have never experienced the same success in Australia that they have in America, it might be hard to imagine the level of excitement that fans of indie-rock are feeling right now, with the band’s first album in six years set to be released in a matter of weeks.
With a new album on the way, frontman Dave Matthews has been doing the rounds on the press circuit, which saw him recently sit down with Vulture, where he discussed his relationship with different musical genres, in particular heavy metal.
“It used to be ‘If you like Nirvana you can’t like the Dave Matthews Band’; ‘If you like Pearl Jam you can’t like the Dave Matthews Band,'” explained Matthews, referencing a sense of elitism between genres. “But if I can like all those bands as much as I do, then why can’t someone else? I guess we all have our tribe and you’re not supposed to be in more than one.”
“I love some country music because there’s great country music. I love some heavy metal because there’s great heavy metal,” he continued. “Someone is going to have brilliance inside of whatever box they’re in. That brilliance is what I look for. There’s great every kind of music just like there’s great every kind of liquor.”
However, following an extended series of questioning where Matthews referenced his drinking habits (remember his song ‘Too Much’?), he was asked by the interviewer if be found it strange to perform in front of crowds where a lot of fans are “absolutely loaded.”
“There’s probably not as much drinking at our shows as there are at heavy-metal shows — and our crowds are probably better looking,” Matthews explained. “But yeah, you see the most hammered people in the world from the stage. There’s a lot of revelry around me. I’ve reined a lot of mine in over the years.”
While we’d like to assume that this was something of a poor choice of words on Dave Matthews’ part, his choice of phrasing does tend to paint the entire fanbase of the metal genre as heavy drinkers, which is, quite frankly, more than a little unfair to what would probably be a fair portion of his fanbase.
Check out Dave Matthews Band’s ‘Too Much’:
