Features
Machine Head Members Quit, Upcoming Tour Now A ‘Celebration’ Of Legacy
Dave Roberts / ExtremeGuitars.com – Robb Flynn of Machine Head
Fillmore, Charlotte, N.C.
Internal tensions in Machine Head seem to have boiled over as at least two members have quit, according to a video posted by frontman Robb Flynn. The tour will take place, but appears likely be the last, at least for some time.
“Wednesday night Phil Demmel quit machine head. Yesterday afternoon [Thursday, Sept. 27], Dave McClain quit Machine Head. And Jared [MacEachern] kind of quit, but [I] didn’t know if he was quitting for sure,” Flynn said in a Facebook live video posted Sept. 28.
“The tour is still going to go on. We have all agreed to make this a celebration of our music and this era of the band.”
Flynn explained that band members had grown apart as people and musically and he had “held on too tight to the reins of this band and I have suffocated those guys.” He went on to explain his gratitude for everything the departing members contributed.
The club tour is scheduled to kick off at Ace Of Spades in Sacramento, Calif., Oct. 4, and the band has more than a month of dates, wrapping Nov. 24 in Santa Cruz, Calif.’s Catalyst. Along the way the band is scheduled to play the “Rock The Boat” cruise, departing out of Sydney, Australia Oct. 23.
Machine head formed in the early 1990s out of Oakland, Calif., and has been submitting reports to Pollstar for more than 20 years.
The reports indicate that Machine Head has done better in Europe, as it’s highest gross this year was in Brussels, with 1,960 tickets moved for a $83,002 gross. The last time the group reported a headline gross above $100,000 was at Eventim Apollo in London March 11, 2016, when the group sold 4,067 tickets for a $155,215 show.