Last week, video surfaced of Disturbed frontman David Draiman calling out a woman sitting front row, balcony at one of his shows for texting too much. At the time, he asked "are we that boring?" and "what could possibly be so important that you're texting right now."
Turns out, it was the well-being of her daughter, who was caught in the middle of a storm. After said fan was reached by the Dallas Observer for comment, it turned out she had a perfectly valid reason for texting and ultimately decided to no longer support Disturbed, a band she was a fan of for a long time. News of this got back to Draiman, who has since issued a statement to Loudwire:
“You know when I did what I did, it wasn’t me trying to push her away. It was a matter of me trying to engage her,” said the singer. “It’s what I’ve done for years and in most circumstances if there is someone who is being passive. They respond positively, ‘Oh, he acknowledged me. He’s really watching. I will get into it and he’s actually paying attention to me’ and they become more involved. It’s very unfortunate that it backfired obviously with her.”
He continued, “I wasn’t privy to the information of what she had going on and when I made my original Facebook post that information had not yet come out. I feel badly about it and I am sorry. I can only say at this particular point that I think that that tactic may be something that I from here on out remove from my live repertoire because obviously there is the chance of me making that scenario happen again if I don’t have the information that would keep me from making that mistake.”
Draiman concludes, “So again, I feel badly about it and I am sorry. I never want anyone to leave one of our shows feeling badly. The whole idea is to pull them and to make them feel empowered and sometimes you’ve got to be a little forceful when you do that and if she got rubbed the wrong way, that is something that I regret.”
I don't understand how putting somebody on blast would "make them feel empowered," but whatever. I will at least give credit to Draiman for properly apologizing and offering to never do it again.
