(Incubus)
Apart from my lack of talent, I could never be in a touring band. I have enough trouble falling asleep in my own bed, let alone tour buses and motels. I also curl up in a fetal position when sick and avoid the world. Brandon Boyd has one solution to fighting illness: alcohol.
Thankfully, for the purposes of this book, I have a lot of horror stories. One of the worst for me was when we did the Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco in 2009, a huge event in Golden Gate Park, with about 50,000 people. It was our first time playing the festival. We were so excited to do it, and we had just come off a super duper, and very well-attended, US tour. One of the worst things that can happen to a singer is to get sick, and there’s a long history of hypochondriac lead singers as a result of the paranoia of getting a common cold. The day before the fest, I came down with a really nasty cold. I sort of felt OK, but my voice was completely trashed. I did everything in my power the day of the show to not freak out, but when I went to warm up my voice, there was just nothing there. I could barely talk. It was one of those situations where I wanted to just run away. I was praying for a UFO to abduct me or just something to get me as far away from that festival stage as possible.
I started to feel a panic attack coming on, thinking that I had less than an hour before I had to go out in front of all these people. Our bass player saw me pacing in the dressing room and asked if I was all right. I pointed to my throat and croaked, “I got no voice.” Just before we went on stage, he grabbed a fresh bottle of wine, handed it to me, and said, “All right man, it’s time to get drunk.” For a lightweight like me, I downed a bottle and was properly drunk halfway through the set. I still couldn’t sing a note, but I just didn’t really care. I think at some point I announced to the crowd, in a drunken stupor, “Sorry Outside Lands, I’m fucking sick.” I knew in my heart that it was one of the worst concerts I’d ever performed, and I could see by the tens of thousands of faces that they knew it too. They picked up on my I-don’t-care-let’s-get-drunk vibe, so people weren’t booing. I don’t remember much, but I do remember having fun, which was amazing considering how completely panicked I had been.
The catch is that we travel all over the world and make our living by touring. Out of all the shows we’ve done, the one I get the most feedback about is that goddamn Outside Lands show. I’ll meet someone and after explaining that I’m the singer in Incubus, they’ll say, “Oh, I saw you one time in San Francisco.” I’ll ask, “Oh cool, at the Warfield?” They say, “No, it was at Outside Lands.” That happens everywhere we go. I’ve met people in Abu Dhabi who saw the show. For the rest of my life, I’ll have people coming up to me, saying they saw the worst show of my life.
In 2001, we put out an album called Morning View, and we had two sold-out dates set up at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City to start the tour. It was a really exciting time for us, and there was all this lovely momentum coming off our last record Make Yourself. I woke up in my SoHo hotel room on September 11, which was just a few blocks away from the Twin Towers. We were close enough that when the planes hit the building, all the car alarms were going off below us, and my hotel window was rattling. It was viscerally shocking before I even had any idea what was going on. It was the most frightening experience I can remember having in my life. We played a show in New Hampshire on the thirteenth, and there was a strange, solemn mood the entire show. The next two shows were scheduled at Hammerstein on the fourteenth and fifteenth.
We were really uncertain about what was the right thing to do. We wanted to be there and play but also to be as respectful as possible. We considered canceling, and we asked the promoter what was going on. He said, “Everyone’s canceling, but we’re not telling any of the bands to cancel. We think some people may want to take their minds off things right now and come together.” They ended up being two of the most memorable concerts in my professional life. There were moments where it was solemn and moments when it was extremely sad, but for the most part, there was a feeling of incredible unity and solidarity. I’m still really grateful that people came out, and a lot of people didn’t show up. Both nights, the room was about three-quarters full, which was surprising, given the circumstances.
I’ve never heard an American audience sing as loud, or emote as freely, as on those two nights. It still sticks with me. It felt like the first step in a massive healing. Now, it seems like every couple of months, some nightmarish tragedy occurs at concerts, like the Vegas shooting. We had a residency lined up in Vegas at that time, and we did end up canceling that. It’s such a strange feeling now to be a traveling entertainer in a world where weird, fucked-up stuff happens all the time, and I have to make that a part of my reality. I have this kind of hyper-vigilance now, and the shock and reality of these mass shootings doesn’t wear off, nor should it. I don’t want it to, and I don’t want to normalize this reality. I don’t want to resign myself to thinking, “Oh, well, people die at concerts now.” I can’t do that.