Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe recently spoke with Tripp Lanier about the tragic death of a fan who passed away a month after attending one of the band’s shows. He opened up about the emotional toll it had on him.
Blythe explained that, while he had an idea of what happened during the show, he wasn’t sure about all the details. “Although I’m pretty sure that I knew what happened during the show, where this young man lost his life a month after the show, I had a rough idea. I wasn’t drunk during the show, I knew that for a fact, thank goodness,” he started explaining.
“I knew I hadn’t tried to hurt anyone purposely, but I didn’t know whether there were some details missing. It’s not like I got a speeding ticket in Boise and I wasn’t going to go drive an Idaho for a few years. A young person died.”
However, the fan’s family wasn’t mad at the frontman, instead, they only wanted one thing. “So, the family of this young man never came at me in the press, they were never like, ‘This guy’s a monster,’ or whatever. They just wanted to know what happened to their son. So for me, as scary as it was, I needed answers myself I thought perhaps only a trial or talking was the only way. I was going to talk to people over there during a trial, I needed answers.”
Blythe continued, “If there was some component of responsibility that I held for this young man’s death, that I was unaware of, if I had behaved in a manner that I did not remember, or if I had done something that I was not aware of, I needed to be made aware of that because if I held some sort of responsibility for this young man’s death and I didn’t want to look at that, then it’s only a hop skip and a jump for me to be like, ‘You know what? This is all very uncomfortable, and I’m not responsible.'”
“But I don’t want to look at that, and that would have grown in me and eventually, it would have become so uncomfortable that I would have picked up the only answer that I was aware of for blotting things from my consciousness, and that would be alcohol or drugs. I would be right back where I started. I was like about a year a little over a year and a half I think sober.”
Blythe also reflected on the family’s lack of understanding of the heavy nature of a metal concert though he was empathetic. “These poor people, they don’t know. They aren’t metalheads, they don’t know what a show is like, they don’t have any clue. They just know their kid went to go see my band and he’s dead now.”
“So, I need to try to the best of my ability to provide these people with some answers to what happened that night. I felt a moral responsibility. I couldn’t just be like, ‘F*ck you,’ that’s not right. Yes, it was very scary, but I’m certain I would have drank again had I not gone back in face trial certain of it. I can appreciate that answer killed myself or just committed suicide because the psychical weight of that would have killed me,” he added.
The incident happened 13 years ago. A court in the Czech Republic has charged Blythe in connection with the death of the said fan after a 2012 concert in Prague. The band’s manager stated at the time that Blythe was innocent and planned to defend himself at trial.
The singer was accused of pushing a fan off the stage, causing him to hit his head on the floor. The fan died two weeks after the incident, and Blythe was charged with manslaughter. The band’s manager, Larry Mazer, said that the rocker did nothing wrong and emphasized that concert tickets don’t give fans access to the stage.
The frontman was unaware of the arrest warrant when he was detained on June 27, 2012, and spent five weeks in custody before being released on bail.
