Disturbed Allegedly “F**ked Up” the Chicago Bulls’ NBA Championship Banners
I guess we’re just calling anything fake news nowadays. That’s fine? Disturbed can get into the thick of it sometimes, and they’ve found themselves in it again somehow. There have been rumors, whispers, and murmurs about the band’s recent show in Chicago. Pyrotechnics were launched, and fire took place, but not in a way that the band wanted to claim. At least, Disturbed’s drummer Mike Wengren feels that way.
The United Center, where the whole hoopla took place, released a statement on March 14 about the alleged damage to the city’s NBA hometeam banners. Their championship banners… their SIX championship banners, from 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, and 1998…
“United Center is currently working with the Bulls to explore options to repair these banners,” a United Center spokesperson wrote in a statement. “While the banners will not be in place for the remainder of this season, we do anticipate them being back in place next season.”
In a new interview with MetalUniverse.net, Wengren hella pushed back at the allegations, and his statement is lowkey funny. To me, at least. He goes on and on about it, as you can read below.
“That’s actually false. So one of the stagehands ran with the story and now it’s turned into something… We didn’t burn anything. If you think about the size of it, even if you watch the show tonight, you’ll see how high it is. We have extensive pyro and the flames are very high, but it gets tested every day. The fire marshals look at it… Everybody looks [at it] before [the concert] during the day. There’s no way we could come even close to the banners. So it’s bullshit.”
“It’s frustrating for us. Because on one hand, the fan perspective is, ‘Wow, their pyro is that incredible, so I’ve gotta see the show,’ so maybe that’s kind of cool but then the other hand is as we’re continuing on this tour with the same show, every building we go into is now nervous about us causing damage to their building.
“We’re big sports fans, especially myself. We were at the game last night. We would never be disrespectful to anyone’s building. We are hometown Chicago boys. Why would we desecrate our own team? It’s ridiculous. Today, for example, the marshals tested everything. But this building is actually very smart; they have a system where you just have to press a button and the banners roll up. So there’s a safe [way to deal with it], but some of the buildings don’t have that.”
Getting back to the whole point at hand, Wengren said the whole hullabaloo is “fake news.” Come on, man. If y’all did it then y’all did it. It’s okay to admit it.
