The Machine Head frontman is understandably cut up about this week's events in Nevada.
Answering a fan question about gun control during a recent livestream (something he does a lot of, often talking politics and current events), Machine Head's Robb Flynn stated that after this week’s horrific shooting in Las Vegas, he has found himself considering removing the song from Machine Head sets moving forward. The livestream itself is lost to the mists of time, but the folks at ThePRP were diligent enough to transcribe the key passages:
“I am in favor of gun control. That motherfucker—everybody heard about the horrible Las Vegas, the horrible horrible… That dude had 23 assault rifles in his fucking hotel room—that is fucking insane to me. That is fucking insane to me, you know? It’s a fucking horrible, it’s a horrible thing that happened in Las Vegas. It’s fucking appalling. When I first heard the news yesterday morning, I couldn’t even put it together…
“This morning, I thought I don’t ever want to fucking play ‘Davidian‘ again, that’s what I thought this morning. I straight up was like—I even texted it to the dudes, like ‘I don’t want to ever play ‘Davidian‘ again’, like fuck man. It’s fucking crazy. We probably will, we didn’t discuss it and that’s just how I feel right at the moment, but I fucking… It’s some scary shit, it’s fucking crazy out there right now. What the fuck is going on with people right now? It’s fucking crazy.”
Flynn is, of course, referring to the moment in Davidian where he exclaims, "let freedom ring with a shotgun blast!", and we would imagine what makes him uncomfortable with that is the connection between "freedom" and "a shotgun blast", especially when certain awful people on the right have been calling the shootings "the price of freedom".
It'd certainly suck to lose Davidian, the jewel in the crown of Machine Head's live canon, but we understand the Flynn's feelings at the moment.
We keep coming back to this Dynamo 1995 performance of the song:
