LAMB OF GOD's RANDY BLYTHE Learned A Lot About Discipline While Writing Memoir

June 2, 2016

Zeena Koda of VEVO conducted an interview with LAMB OF GOD singer Randy Blythe at this year's Rock On The Range festival, which was held May 20-22 in Columbus, Ohio. You can now watch the chat below.

Speaking about the process of writing his memoir, "Dark Days: A Memoir", which came out last year, Randy joked: "Writing is easy. All you have to do is stare at a blank page until your eyeballs bleed."

He continued: "I wrote kind of slowly. By the time I sent in my third draft, there wasn't any revision; it was just amputation. That's what my editor told me. Which is like ripping your soul out. You don't want to [go through it], but, I mean, that's why you need an editor; otherwise you get indulgent. But it's, like, a whole chapter will disappear, and you're, like, 'There's a month of my life.' Literally. There's a whole month. Boom! I remember writing all that stuff. Gone."

Blythe also talked about the major differences between telling his own story and writing fiction. He said: "I'm pretty wide open as a person in general, so what you see is what you get, whether it's on stage or in a book, or if I write with my photographs. I don't know… Some people think I'm too blunt. I've had to temper that a little bit.

"For me, writing that book, in some ways I think it was a lot easier than writing a fiction book, because I knew what was gonna happen; I lived it. On the other hand, it was a lot harder, because it's not a happy book, and the main character, that being me, if I didn't like something that was happening to him, I couldn't just say, 'Okay, suddenly he's developed the ability to fly and [he took himself] out of the situation.'"

He added: "I learned a lot about the discipline that it takes to write, 'cause that's what it is for me. Writing itself — like sitting and the words coming and all that stuff — I mean, yeah, you work on it, but it's not hard for me. The hard thing to do is to sit down in a chair every single day, like I said, and stare at blank page or a computer screen and just, like, 'Urgh.' It's not inspiration; it's discipline. That's exactly what it is.

"I can't remember who said it. It was, like, 'They say, 'I only write when I'm inspired.' Luckily, I'm inspired at precisely 9:30 a.m. every single morning.' That's what it is. Sit down and put your butt in the chair. That's the hardest thing."

In "Dark Days", Blythe tells the whole incredible story of his arrest, incarceration, trial, and acquittal for manslaughter in the Czech Republic over the tragic and accidental death of a concertgoer.

Find more on Lamb of god
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • reddit
  • email

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).