Volbeat Frontman: “Three Weeks Before a Tour, We Suddenly Became a Three-Piece”
In June, Volbeat announced that they’d split with their longtime guitarist, Rob Caggiano, not long before a scheduled tour was set to kick off. Caggiano, for his part, said that sometimes relationships just “run their course” and now Volbeat singer Michael Poulsen has weighed in.
“There’s a statement on the net [about the split with Rob], and I can’t go into too much details. But the thing was, three weeks before a tour, we suddenly became a three-piece. And, of course, for us, [we initially thought], ‘Let’s just go out as a three-piece. This is the situation we are in now.’ But at the end of the day, when we were sitting down and I was about to do the setlist, of course we became a little bit handicapped.”
Poulsen continued by explaining how they selected Caggiano’s fill in, The Arcane Order guitarist Flemming C. Lund.
So, there was different options to who we were going to give a call to help us out, but since I already worked with Flemming and I knew Flemming, I gave him a call, even though he said, ‘I have no idea how Volbeat sounds like.’ [Laughs] He’s only into death metal. So he said, ‘I just have to listen to a lot of Volbeat records, I guess.’ Of course he knew Volbeat — everybody knows Volbeat in Denmark — but he was not listening to Volbeat. So he said, ‘Give me a few days just to actually figure out what you guys are playing,’ beside the stuff that you hear on the radio. And he took up the challenge, and we made an agreement and he’s helping out Volbeat for this year.”
Poulsen’s statement tells us nothing about Caggiano’s split with the band but it’s good to see that touring continues as usual. When Caggiano left the band, he said:
“I also want to wish Michael, Jon, Kaspar, (Anders too) and the entire Volbeat camp the best of luck moving forward. I’m extremely proud of everything we accomplished together over the last 10 years. Sometimes relationships simply run their course. Sometimes certain obstacles, people or circumstances get in the way of the greater good. Sometimes people change and priorities shift. Sometimes it’s unavoidable. We had a very special undeniable magic together as a band. It’s not something that comes around too often in this life and it’s not something to be taken lightly. I certainly do not.
“However, while this is really a very emotional time for me I’m also extremely excited about what lies ahead in the future. Lots of exciting things happening right now. I really couldn’t be more fired up!! Stay tuned……”
Stay tuned for any further updates.
