MACHINE HEAD’s Rob Flynn Recounts The Band’s Beginnings In Oakland, California: “It’s Still A Pretty Rough-And-Tumble Town”

It’s the year of anniversaries for bands, apparently – and while Machine Head may have celebrated their 30th anniversary last year, they’re still reminiscing on just how far they’ve come.

When talking to Metal Hammer earlier this week, guitarist and vocalist of Machine Head Robb Flynn took a trip down memory lane, recounting what it was like for the band when they first started 30 years ago, “It’s still a pretty rough-and-tumble town. People think like, ‘Oh, it’s California.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, but it’s Oakland.'”

Machine Head started off playing off in the Bay Area in the early 90s, when the area was struggling with growing inequalities due to rapid urban growth and economic booms and homelessness started becoming a more prominent issue in the area – an effect of the rapid gentrification urban areas were seeing.

Flynn was born in an area where now buildings lay either boarded-up or untouched, “There’s a bar named Merchant’s Saloon that has been around for over 100 years with ‘No Nazis’ and ‘Fuck Off’ stickers in the window, “It’s been here since 1916. It’s a legit dive bar. It’s got a latrine that goes around the bar, so people could pee at the bar and it would drain out into the street. That’s how OG it is.”

That kind of history? “It keeps you humble.”

Performing in backyards at keggers, church halls, and community centres, Machine Head eventually graduated to a thrash nightclub before the rest was history, but not before some gigs that barely paid in some less than ideal areas. When Flynn had started playing in the 90s, he was also worked for a concert promoter as a caterer, a job in which Flynn even admitted that, “I dealt drugs for a while,” on the side as well. Assumingly, just to make ends meet.

And it’s a humble history, for quite a humble band that blew up into one of the biggest heavy metal bands to come out of California.