Randy Blythe
speaker
593 appearances
5 recordings
3 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 15 Apr
Randy Blythe’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So now I didn't really – past a certain – right around sixth grade, I just gave up. I was like, these people don't like me. I can't get a girlfriend like everyone else. They make fun of my clothes. They think I'm weird because I read books, which I thought was asinine even then. I even had teachers make fun of the way I read. And I was like, just screw these people then.
And just started externalizing that anger. And that's why the punk rock scene so appealed to me because most of the lyrics were political or societal based around social issues at the time. And I can transfer that anger in a righteous way to what I view as valid or just causes, things you should be mad about.
Yes. And I think it was a combination of things because I came a little bit later to drinking than you did. I drank and did drugs pretty heroically for 22 years, right? I mean, Olympic level drinking, especially for a skinny dude like myself, I could... put away a case of beer a day, no problem, along with shots and whatever else I managed to shovel down my gullet because I was a garbage can.
Right about my senior year in high school, a couple of things happened. I got my first real serious girlfriend. And she was an extremely pretty girl. And everybody was all of a sudden very confused. They're like, how did you get that? How did you pull that off? And I'm like, she's an artist. We're talking about the cure. She and I listened to the cure together. So. I got my first real girlfriend.
I'm going to this art school. I'm becoming more and more involved in this sort of underground music culture. And I'm finding my people. But at the same time, during that same time, I started doing some drinking on the weekends with some friends of mine who we used to party in their garage. And that really made things better. Finally, I felt okay.
You mentioned talking to girls or feeling comfortable in social situations. That did all that for me. It removed this self-consciousness or this feeling like these people are looking at me and judging me to where I don't care. So what if they are? I'm having a good time. And at first, alcohol provided that sort of relief. It lifted that horrible feeling.
blanket, that wet blanket of what I felt was societal judgment on me to where I did not care. And it was wonderful for a little while. And that's a very common thing you hear. I know a lot of sober people. I've been sober for 14 years now. I know a lot of sober people and almost all of them will say male or female, whatever.
All of a sudden I was a, I could talk to members of the opposite sex or if they were gay to the same sex, I could hang out and go in public. And I felt a part of, I felt as if something had changed. And that was very much the case for me. It just made life easier. It was an answer to this unnamed issue. I had this unnamed problem because it wasn't,
At 17 years old, I was not sitting there analyzing myself through a Freudian eye. Well, you're excluded. You have societal anger. You're self-judgmental, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was just like, something is wrong. Something is wrong here. And then all of a sudden, these few things happened and things started to feel right. And alcohol was definitely a big part of that.
And I realized that more and more. The more I stay sober, the longer I stay sober, I look back at my earliest drinking and I realize it was fairly abnormal even for like people go to college and they drink some or they drink a little bit in high school. Mine was a bit more intense. And I'm realizing that and seeing the signs now only with the benefit of hindsight.
I've seen them. I don't think we have them in Virginia.
A recreational beverage distribution manager.
I bet it did. I was a... recreational pharmaceutical salesman myself for a little bit.
Through miscreants and criminals, they brought you to this world.
In the beginning, we were booking our own tours. We weren't traveling around on a tour bus or anything. We were in a series of constantly breaking down condo line vans. I mean, we've literally changed the transmission in a van in a Walmart parking lot before. Crazy stuff. And we were playing mostly like VFW halls or people's basements, punk rock squats, things like that.
And hoping for maybe enough gas money to get down the road. and maybe a plate of spaghetti to eat for dinner and someone's floor to sleep on. That's what we'd say. Hey, on stage, can anyone give us a place to stay tonight? Because there was no money for a hotel or anything. At that time, it was very exciting because you're doing this, you're doing this not, certainly not for any reason,
hope of monetary compensation whatsoever it's for the love of playing music it's for this thing you want to express yourself that's how this was a manner i had found by loosely call it singing by singing in this band it was a manner of me expressing myself and surprise after a while for the first time in my life people i didn't even know started to
enjoy the manner in which I was expressing myself artistically. So it was very gratifying, but it was also a very big adventure in those early days. Because like I said, we were not exactly making any money. It was just like, we're going to go out and wow, I get to go to Chicago and see what Chicago is.
That was about the furthest we made it before we eventually wound up going in tour buses eventually. And we wound up going to California and so forth. So it was very exciting, but it's also a great place to really develop and hone a taste for alcohol and other substances. Because you're not beholden to getting up in the office. And if you are drunk on stage, that was expected. That's the norm.
So you could get away with things that people at a normal job simply could not get away with. Right? I mean... Alcohol is my one true love. I managed to never get strung out on drugs. I do not know how because I get a ton of them. But I used to stand on stage and be like, who's got the drugs? Who's got the pills? And like magic, people would... come up and hand me drugs.
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