FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH drummer Jeremy Spencer, who grew up in Boonville, Indiana, was interviewed by the WFIE television station on May 3 when his band returned to the city to play Ford Center with SHINEDOWN and P.O.D. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).
On how he ended up leaving Boonville and moving to California:
Jeremy: “Well, I always thought, ‘I need to get out of here if I’m gonna go be in the music business.’ So I thought, ‘I’ll just move out West — California. There’s gotta be music happening there. That’s where it’s happening.’ So I ended up moving out with an old friend from the neighborhood who was in the military out West, near San Diego. He was, like, ‘Let’s just get a place out there, man.’ And I’m, like, ‘Cool. Let’s go. There’s gotta be music.’ And I went out there and there was really no music scene near San Diego. So, after doing some networking and meeting people and some years going by, I finally got to Hollywood and hooked up with some musicians there. And then it took a few years for that to catch on. I was trying to do my own band and break through in many ways, and it was a struggle for a long time; a lot of people don’t even know the kind of struggle that it took to get to where we are now. But I finally got a record deal with FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH after so many years of trying to have a breakthrough doing original music. Then it took us a while, actually, to catch on. Finally, it was about nine months after our first single came out when radio really started playing it, and then I noticed a change in attendance and people starting to come out. And then we got to make a second record and that one really started to sell, and then it just started to grow from there. And now we’re headlining arenas. It’s really cool.”
On his autobiography, “Death Punch’d: Surviving Five Finger Death Punch’s Metal Mayhem”, which originally came out on September 2, 2014 via HarperCollins:
Jeremy: “After I got out of a rehabilitation program — you know, I’ve had some struggles, off and on, throughout my life with some addiction problems and things like that — I kind of needed an outlet to kind of vent just some things that hadn’t been processed yet, and I needed stuff to fill my time, because I was a different person. So I was, like, ‘Let’s just start writing about your life.’ From my earliest memory on, I would write a little bit every day. And it was very therapeutic; it was a way to get stuff out and kind of deal with things I never really dealt with. And it kind of turned out to be fun and sad, and it was everything. And I was reading it back, and I would get a kick out of it. And then, finally, when I had a lot of words written, I sent it to my dad, and he was, like, ‘Well, if you release it like this, you’ll be ostracized, because you need some help kind of tightening this up a little bit.’ So he kind of went through and helped filter it, and we did an edit. And I sent it to management, and they loved it, and then they ended up shopping and getting a book deal. I really never thought that I would land a book deal. So the book came out and it ended up charting on The New York Times best-sellers list. So I was, like, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me!’ It was just a fun outlet for me, and then it turned into this serious thing. So it was cool.”
On FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH’s plans to return to the studio:
Jeremy: “Well, we’re gonna do some festival touring as well as some of these arena shows this summer, and I think we’re gonna hit the studio sometime this summer; we’ll begin that process. I’m not sure when it will come, but definitely we’ll start recording something this summer.”
FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH has regularly released an album every two years or so since 2007.
It was revealed last month that the band’s label, Prospect Park, filed a lawsuit against the group, accusing it of allegedly trying to violate its recording contract by rushing to make a new album despite the addiction problems of singer Ivan Moody.
The group fired back, calling the suit “the latest in a long line of exploitative and abusive bullying tactics used by our former manager and current label CEO Jeff Kwatinetz to extract money from and wield power against the band.”
Source: Blabbermouth
