Phil Demmel On Departure From Machine Head: There Was “A Shift in the Dynamic in the Band”
It’s been six years now since Phil Demmel left Machine Head, and it was a rather weird departure. Demmel left at the same time as drummer Dave McClain, but the two still agreed to do one more tour with the band before calling it quits, which had to make for one really uncomfortable tour because that split was not amicable at all.
In a recent interview with San Francisco radio station 107.7 The Bone, Demmel opened up about why he left the band, and he talked about a strange a sudden change in the band around the time they recorded their ninth studio album, 2018’s Catharsis. Here’s what Demmel had to say, as transcribed by Blabbermouth:
“The whole ‘Catharsis’ cycle, there was just a shift in the dynamic in the band. Me and Dave felt it extremely. He was more on the fence than I was — on the ledge, I’ll say; Dave was more on the ledge than I was… I didn’t really like the record. I liked some of the stuff that I contributed to. I liked some of the songs that were on there. It’s not a horrible record. It’s not. But it was just a weird record in the sense that you could just feel this dynamic shift with everything… But I felt that once [my wife and I bought a bar in Dublin, California and] we had the business that I wasn’t so reliant on the [MACHINE HEAD] paycheck and I felt that I could be done with the band. I didn’t wanna be done with music. We had the Pro Tools in the studio set up in the house and I was learning how to program some drums and I was learning and I was writing different stuff. So, I had one foot on a banana peel and the other one out the door. And I slipped on that banana peel and I was out the door. It was time for me to go. I didn’t know what was gonna happen and I didn’t care.”
He continued, saying:
“It was the music, but it wasn’t the music. It was 99 percent personal that I couldn’t be there anymore. It was affecting my sleep. It was a toxic entity in my head, in my heart that I had to purge, and I tried to — I wouldn’t say ‘play ball,’ but I tried to go along as long as I could, until I couldn’t. And then it was just — one thing happened to where it was just, like, ‘Oh, I’m fucking done. I can’t be in a band like this anymore,’ and delivered my [resignation]… I didn’t know what was gonna happen [after I left], but I knew that I was instantly relieved and I was smiling and happy and a hundred percent sure that it was the right decision.”
As for the bizarre decision to do one last tour with the band, Demmel explained that frontman Robb Flynn guilted him into it:
“I quit with a tour on the books, and they were supposed to do a video that that weekend. And I said, ‘I’m not doing any of it. I’m done.’ And I called Dave on the way to Robb’s [Flynn, MACHINE HEAD leader], and [Dave] is, like, ‘Oh, you beat me to it. I’m quitting tomorrow.’ And so I called Robb the next day and said, ‘Hey, it’s a dick move to bail on tour.’ And it was. I said, ‘If you can’t find anybody to replace me, then I’ll honor the tour and we can…’ whatever.”
Demmel later described the tour as “awkward” and compared it to “going on a honeymoon with somebody you just asked for a divorce for,” which is an apt description. Thankfully, Demmel seems to be happy working with Kerry King and Category 7 for now.
