Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds Reacts to Serj Tankian’s Contempt
After roughly a year of System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian effectively dragging Imagine Dragons for playing shows in some locales that have some questionable human rights records, the pop-rock group’s frontman Dan Reynolds has fired back with some thoughts of his own on the matter during a Rolling Stone interview.
As you may recall, Tankian’s had issues with Imagine Dragons started when the band refused to cancel a show in Azerbaijan while that country was committing an ethnic cleansing of Armenians. This was despite receiving a letter from Tankian asking them to back out of the show.
This is what that letter said at the time:
“Now it has to be said.
A few months ago, it came to my attention that @imaginedragons had planned a show on Sept 2nd in Baku Azerbaijan. I was sure they were unaware that Azerbaijan’s petro-oligarchic dictatorial regime was starving 120k people in Nagorno-Karabagh which is now being called a Genocide by the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo. So through representatives, I sent them a kind letter urging them to reconsider playing their show in Azerbaijan as it would help whitewash the dictatorial regime’s image there. I included various articles including one by Amnesty Int’l who I was told they have worked with in the past. There was no response. No answer, no response. As the humanitarian crisis worsens in Nagorno-Karabagh with starvation already being recorded I am forced to publicize this letter and their disregard for this humanitarian catastrophe. Maybe they felt they had a legal liability to play the show, maybe they just don’t care. My whole life I have been an advocate for genocide recognition and have always said there has to be a price to pay for Genocidal regimes or deniers. Another genocide is looming by Azerbaijan and while this happens they get to enjoy an American band from LV. Fuck that!
That’s not right.
Go to my profile to sign a petition to the band on change.org if you care to sign and you can see my letter to the band on my Facebook page. Thanks for reading. Serj.”
More recently, Tankian said he had “zero respect” for Imagine Dragons for going through with said show.
“If you are that blind to justice that you will go play a show in a country that’s starving another country, illegally, according to the International Court of Justice, according to what Amnesty International is saying, what Human Rights Watch is saying… Ff you still go and play that country, I don’t know what to say about you as a fucking human being. I don’t even care about your music. If you’re a bad human being, I don’t give a fuck. So that’s where I’m at with that. I have zero respect for those guys.”
As it turns out, not everyone’s a musician activist and after seeing Tankian’s condemnation, Reynolds had this to say:
“No. I don’t believe in depriving our fans who want to see us play because of the acts of their leaders and their governments. I think that’s a really slippery slope. I think the second you start to do that, there’s corrupt leaders and warmongers all over the world, and where do you draw the line?”
When asked if his statement was in direct response to Tankians’ he further said:
“I think I just said it. It’s a slippery slope, and I’m never going to deprive our fans of playing for them.”
