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DISTURBED: The Pride of the South Side Go Platinum!

by Tom Lounges

"What a difference a year can make in your life," says hometown rock hero
and MTV star, David Draiman of Oak Lawn's Disturbed, reflecting on how things
have changed since the band signing with Giant Records in 1999.

    About that long ago, Draiman was still working full time in a nursing
home and only dreaming of being in the position he now finds himself.

    "It's a little unnerving sometimes to find people recognize you in cities
where you have never even been to before," he said. "It's taken a while to
get used to that kind of stuff and to having people ask for your autograph.
But it's happening almost everywhere we go lately, so we must be making a
mark, right?"

     Ummmm...considering that you group's debut album, The Sickness, was just
certified platinum, that is a pretty safe bet there David.

     Tasting the success alongside Draiman are guitarist Dan Donegan, drummer
Mike Wengren and bassist Fuzz, longtime mates who talked about one day
stepping up the national level while pooling money for beers and humping gear
together at region haunts like Champs, J.J. Kelley's and Smiler Coogan's.

    Midwest BEAT Magazine caught up to Disturbed last month in Phoenix, just
before they were to hit the stage for the very last date of the MTV-sponsored
"Return Of The Rock" tour.

     "As soon as we finish up this tour here tonight, we are gonna grab a few
hours of sleep and then it's off to the airport," said the singer. "We fly
out to London in the morning to start a 10-day headline tour that will take
us to Hamburg, Amsterdam, Paris and wrap up in Milan.

    Draiman joked about the band's good fortune to be rocking in Amsterdam
just as the city was playing host to the acclaimed Cannabis Cup. "Now that's
a gig I am really looking forward to doing," mused the singer.

   "When we come back from Europe, we'll be doing a short U.S. headline tour
and we'll also be doing a lot of radio-sponsored concerts in a bunch of
cities," said Draiman, "like the 'Twisted 7' show Q101 is doing in Chicago
(December 9)."

    Disturbed has not performed live in Chicagoland since OzzFest blew
through town in early August. While it has only been a few months since
then, an awful lot has happened in the lives of these Chi-town rockers.

   The eerie sanatarium-shot music video for their first single, "Stupify,"
got added to MTV's "Buzz Bin" in fall and escalated their rise to fame.

    "After Ozzfest, we did a headlining tour that primarily covered most of
the East Coast. Supporting us on that were Taproot, UltraSpank and a new band
called Liquid Gang," recalled Draiman. "We were playing 2,000-seat venues on
the average and every show was sold out."

    Before that tour wrapped up, Disturbed found themselves the subject of
back to back full page color articles in both Spin Magazine and Rolling
Stone. Both publications declared Disturbed as the "it" band of the summer
tour season.
    Invited by Stone Temple Pilots to be support on some of their tour dates,
Disturbed, brought their newfound friends in Liquid Gang along with them on
that package.

     Never one to miss an opportunity to give props to a fellow band, Draiman
sang the praises of Liquid Gang. "That is a band that you need to tell
people about, because I think they are going to be really big in the near
future," he said. "Mark my words!"

   By the time the Stone Temple Pilots tour was picked up by MTV and morphed
into the media-hyped "Return of the Rock" road show, The Sickness had already
been certified "gold" and was showing no signs of slowing down.

     MTV retained Disturbed and added 1999's "it" band, Godsmack to the tour
line-up in place of Liquid Gang. Unfortunately, the tour bypassed Chicago,
but according to Draiman every date in every city was a complete sell out.

    "That tour was a little hard at first," confessed the singer once known
for stalking area stages in a straightjacket and for wearing a fishnet
stocking pulled over his face. "It was a real challenge to go from
headlining our own tour to playing in front of STP's crowd. It was a case of
us having to win the audience over every night.."

     It was the lack of intimacy in playing an arena that most disturbed
(pardon the pun) Draiman. He discovered that the audience with whom he loves
to interact, was suddenly six to eight feet away from him with a steel
barricade between them.
    "We went from headlining smaller venues to being the main support act to
one of the biggest rock bands in the world and playing in 6,000 to
10,000-seat arenas," he said.

    "In smaller halls, you can see most of the people in your audience and
you can actually reach out and touch them from the stage. In an arena, you
look out and it's just a moving sea of humanity," he continued. "Losing that
closeness. Not being able to maintain that personal connection with the
audience was hard for me to get used when we stepped up to bigger shows."

    Giant Records presented the members of Disturbed with platinum record
awards on November 8 during a special ceremony in L.A. Going "platinum"
means an album has sold one million copies.

    "It was kind of numbing," said Draiman of being handed his platinum
record award. "This album has done remarkably well for us. We've only had
one single ("Stupify") released from it so far and it's already gone
platinum."

    "Voices" has been chosen as their second single. It shipped late last
month to 'Active Rock' radio stations nationwide and will be pushed to
'Modern Rock' stations in mid-January.

    The "Voices" video was directed by Gregory Dark, one of the infamous Dark
Brothers of the adult film genre, and it should already be in MTV rotation by
the time this article prints.

    "How cool is that, to have one of the baddest porn directors behind the
camera while you're shooting on your video," laughed Draiman.

    Fans should not expect a sophomore album from the band until sometime in
2002. "We're going to work this album for a while before we start thinking
of doing another album," he said. "Expect us to be on the road all next year
working this album."

     Fans need not despair, for a fix of fresh material is coming via some
side projects involving the band.

   "We have a track called 'The Welcome Burden' that will be on the 'Dracula
2000' soundtrack," said Draiman. "There's also a compilation CD called,
'Return of the Rock II,' that MTV has put out. We have a track on that
called, 'God of the Mind.'"

    In closing, Draiman stated that he and his mates never forget that it was
their hometown core fans in Chicago that put them on this rock 'n' roll
rollercoaster that's giving them the ride of their life.

    "Give everyone at home our thanks and tell them we will be seeing them
soon," concluded Draiman.

(See DISTURBED at the United Center on 12/9)