Davey Havok Quotes

I’ve gotten kicked in the face, got my nose broken, I’m constantly chipping teeth and there’s been a lot of very close calls with Hunter [the band’s bassist]. In a recent show, if our movement had’ve been inches different, I might be dead. I almost caught his bass to my head at full velocity. You laugh but it’s really scary.

Q: You never heard about it again? A: No. There was no Face-Space or Twitter at the time, so they would have had to put it in a ’zine. Now it’s just folklore. Except it’s not folklore because I’ve just confirmed it.

As far as vocal preparation goes, it’s really an interesting thing for such a fragile instrument and using it properly is like walking a tightrope. I have learned not to do extensive warm-ups. It’s really more of a cerebral mind-body connection Zen hippy thing, just knowing your body and figuring out if I do that then I will be able to speak tomorrow.

I miss having to wonder about any aspect of an artist’s life. [This] was a luxury we don’t have anymore. Whether it’s the people surrounding them revealing things about their process or their personal lives, or the artists themselves going on Twitter and telling you what they’re doing in the middle of the night with their girlfriend — it’s like, ‘Wow, um... I really liked you better before you told me that. I really would like to go back to imagining the person that I was imagining.’

Someone gave me a pig heart in a mason jar. It was in the context of art, I believe. It was chained to a gourd and spattered with the expected colors of paint. And it was indeed, really and truly, a pig’s heart. I’m vegan and so it was kind of upsetting and pretty ironic, really, because it was the type of person I would want to guess was infatuated or obsessed.

Well I think that my main concern is that there is a market lack of desire for quote-unquote art that people are creating and appreciating. I think because there’s a lack of desire for that, which translates to the creation and elevation of art that then thereby lack substance because there’s no desire for it, there’s no appreciation for it. It self-perpetuates a world in which the hollow, the vapid and the greedy are elevated and revered. That bothers me because art is so important whether it’s design, fine art, film, fashion, things that are important to the world. It’s what makes me want to wake up in the morning, it drives me.

It’s not a matter of imaging, despite what a lot of people would feel that it is. I’ve never presented myself in a way that I don’t feel comfortable with; I’ve never presented myself in a way to appeal to anybody. For the most part the way I’ve always looked to not appeal to most people. Really, my aesthetic was really more of a terrorism or violence than it was something to attract; more of a representation of my detachment than anything else — though it’s not always a very conscious thing.

One thing I will say is the education was good — even religion classes. I appreciate the knowledge I have — the imagery still appeals to me. But otherwise, it's pretty fucked up. I remember in the eighth grade, during a parent/teacher conference, a nun came down and spoke to my parents. It's funny because I had great grades, did very well on tests, and got along well with others but she told my parents she was "very concerned". My parents were like "what for?" She told them "I think your son might worship the devil..."

Q: You seem relatively upbeat and sociable. It’s funny, because I’ve always had this idea of you, like, always crying in the dark. A: Most people do. Q: Do you care about that? A: Oh, no. It doesn’t bother me. Whatever people think of me is fine, however they want to envision me. I find it curious. I’m always intrigued by who people think I am and the persona they have created for me, what they think I’m into, what they think I’m not into. But I certainly understand that consideration, that I would be a bleak and miserable person, because a lot of my lyrics are very despondent. Luckily, I have the music to use as catharsis. If I didn’t, I might spend more time sitting and crying in a corner than I need to. Also, I think manners are very important. To be a sullen rain cloud when conversing with someone, be they your friends or a journalist, I think is inappropriate.

More often than not, even the people and even the moments and even the circumstances that you feel you can go to for stability, for that piece of happiness, can all of a sudden shift, and can all of a sudden become tainted. And everything that you believe, or even that small moment of connection that you can feel can sometimes be destroyed. And I’m not a negative person — shockingly. I’m somewhat of a realist. And I’m a very passionate person, so I don’t like to expect that shift, I don’t like to expect for things that I love to become malignant or to become a great disappointment. But it happens. And it’s devastating. Every time.

I just heard a story from someone the other day where somebody was beaten up by Christians for wearing one of our shirts. Of course, that's a very Christian thing to do.

Q: Especially starting off in punk and hardcore like you did, you’re taking a huge risk by constantly expanding your sound, and it’s something you’ve gotten a lot of flack for. Have you reconciled yourselves to that? A: Absolutely. It’s something that we accepted very early on. It really comes from the ethos of being a punk and hardcore band. It was really because we just didn’t give a fuck. In the same way that we were playing punk and hardcore and didn’t give a fuck that anybody liked it, we continued to write and play what we liked and didn’t give a fuck if anybody liked it. Our hope is that people do like it, but if they have an issue with it, it doesn’t matter because we’re doing what makes us happy.

I really think for the good of this world that, if I could have it my way, the whole world would be vegan and straightedge. So that’s why I feel it’s important to create an awareness of this lifestyle, create an awareness of the choices people make. To bring awareness about those lifestyles can bring a positive change, if only on the level of an individual.

It's not that everything needs to have substance, but when nothing does then you know we’re living in a bankrupt society, an artistically bankrupt society, and that’s not okay. I think there’s room for forms of entertainment that are very light and frivolous and fun, but when those forms of entertainment, forms of "art" if you will, become presented as something more than that, and are believed to be something more than that, then we’ve got a lot of problems.

It’d be great if the record industry wasn’t completely falling apart and people’s interest in music wasn’t totally disappearing. It’s sad on a cultural level. Not even from the perspective of being in a band, just as a fan. It’s heartbreaking to see how little music means to people in modern times. And people say, “No, no, no — music means more than ever before! People are consuming music at a greater rate!” Well, that doesn’t mean anything, that’s just a statistic. All that’s saying is that people are downloading music more than before. That doesn’t mean that they’re listening to it, that they know anything about it, or that they’re going to see it.