We've managed to track down 8 bands that Dave has played in before Machine Head but there are possibly more. He played in Catalepsy & Murdercar with future producer Ross Robinson who eventually produced Machine Head's 3 rd album, The Burning Red.
Dave joined Machine Head in December 1995 after Igor Cavalera of Sepultura recommended him to replace Chris. Says Robert Flynn on the weeks leading up to his coming onboard: ‘ He also came out to the Phoenix show the following day; he apologized for maybe leading us on earlier, he said his band, Sacred Reich, had said they were going to do this, and do that, but in the end it was same ol' same ol', and he was done with being in such an unmotivated band. He was hungry, and you could see he was hungry, you could feel he was hungry
Six days after the tour ended on December 10th (at a surprisingly sold out show at The Troubador in L.A. ), Dave flew into Oakland on December 16th, where I picked him up from the airport to try out. To this day, he'll still go on and on, at length, to anyone who will listen, about how I wouldn't help him load his pedals into my car, wouldn't help him carry his cymbals, wouldn't hold the door for him, left garbage on the table at Jack In The Box, what a dick I was to him, blah, blah, blah... I don't remember any of it *AHEM! cough, cough, cough* But, after he volunteered to start off with “Davidian” (which impressed us, as that took balls) 5 and 1/2 minutes later... we knew we had our guy. The three of us sat there clutching our jaws tight (so that they wouldn't drop to the floor) with one eyebrow raised, trying not to smile, silently saying to each other, “Oh my fucking GOD, that was sick!”. We ran him through “Block”, and a good chunk of others, which he slayed, and a few days later tried out one more drummer (Brent - Stuck Mojo) but in the end we knew we had found our guy. Maybe it was that McClain "wingspan", maybe it was how hard and consistently he pounded the fucking drums, maybe it was that he was the funniest complainer we'd ever met... but we knew he was our guy.
Though we wouldn't let him know it, we kept Dave in 10 long days of suspense, until I called him on December 26th, 1995 to let him know he was our guy.'
As well as playing the drums, Dave is an avid guitar player too. You will be surprised to know that Dave wrote many of the riffs on Supercharger & also most of Imperium! |
