Disturbed Guitarist Dan Donegan Explains How “Sound of Silence” Cover Led to Ann Wilson Collab
Bands like Disturbed often don’t get much credit for their strong vocals, which is reasonable considering the generally-accepted standard for singing in butt rock and nü metal. Every now and again, someone surprises you, like when Disturbed nails a cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.”
The cover went three-times platinum in the United States and led to some pretty cool opportunities for the band, including a collaboration with Heart singer Ann Wilson on their upcoming record, Divisive. In an new interview—transcribed by Metal Injection—guitarist Dan Donegan explains how that came to be.
“Early in our career, we wanted to really establish ourselves without having any guests. We didn’t really talk about it much, but just [felt], ‘This is the band.’ Not that we were ever against it, but this far along in our career… We’re always pushing ourselves, trying to do stuff that’s different musically. And there’s so much talent out there and so many people we would love to do collaborations with now or later in our career.
“Ann Wilson had mentioned before — she tweeted about us before. A few years back, somebody asked her in an interview or whatever if there’s anything new out there, or newer, musically that she’s heard that she’s fan of, and she mentioned she really loved our version of ‘The Sound Of Silence’. And that kind of opened the door to a social media friendship between her and [vocalist David Draiman] a bit. And then when we wrote this song, it just seemed like it would lend itself to Ann’s voice and then trying to see that merge between her and David’s voices together. She jumped on the opportunity. Immediately she responded, and we were, like, ‘Holy shit. She just said yes to this.’”
The yet-unreleased track is called “Don’t Tell Me” and Donegan is understandably pretty stoked about it.
“It’s not like she sits there and jumps on people’s albums either, so we take that as a badge of honor to think that there’s not many times where somebody as big a legend as she is that she would jump on any album. She doesn’t have to, and she chose to be on this one. And she loves the track. And it just came together great.”
Divisive is out November 18.
