Pete Parada, a former drummer of The Offspring, recently opened up about his unceremonious exit from the band. He alleges he faced “abusive” behavior from the band’s management, and complained that he was fired after refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Back in 2021, Parada was kicked out of the band after nearly 15 years. At the time, he claimed it was “decided that I am unsafe to be around, in the studio and on tour,” according to NME.
The reasoning? Parada wouldn’t get the COVID-19 vaccine. He says he consulted a doctor who told him he shouldn’t “get a shot at this time” due to a history with Guillain-Barre syndrome, which affected him as a child. He also noted that he wouldn’t do it because of “the side-effect profile of these jabs.” (GBS, a rare and serious nerve condition, has been reported in some individuals following COVID-19 vaccination, particularly with the J&J/Janssen vaccine, but no direct causal link has been proven.)
Parada sat down for an interview with the Try That In A Small Town podcast, and alleged that The Offspring’s manager was the one who set his firing in motion. “He was new with the band. He’d only been with them since Covid hit,” Parada said. “So I didn’t have a lot of history with this guy.”
“He chose to come at me like a flamethrower,” Parada continued. “I’ve gotten crappy phone calls before; this was the most abusive and threatening call I’ve ever had in my entire career.”
Parada went on to claim that the manager was “just yelling” at him and told him that he didn’t “care about your medical exemption” while cutting him off when he tried to speak up. “He made it clear that I was either to get vaccinated or I’d be replaced,” Parada said. “The phone call was so shocking.”
Following the call, Parada says he wrote to “the two guys in the band that were my boss,” presumably referring to The Offspring’s founding vocalist/guitarist Dexter Holland and longtime lead guitarist Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman.
“I tried to talk to them about him and I said, ‘You might fire me over this, but you should know this guy is not representing you well, and if he’s treating me like this, he’s treating your crew even worse,’” Parada claimed. “I was told, ‘That’s not the concern right now, he’s not the concern, your refusal to do this is the concern.’”
“So things deteriorated pretty rapidly after that, and less than a week later I found all communication stopped,” Parada added. “I had a flight and a hotel and stuff on hold to go to rehearsal, and a week later I checked my Southwest app and that’s how I found out I was replaced because my flight was canceled.”
Neither The Offspring nor their manager have issued a statement on Parada’s claims, but the band’s management has been contacted for comment.
The post Former Offspring Drummer Claims He Was Fired and Faced ‘Abusive’ Behavior for Refusing COVID-19 Vaccine appeared first on VICE.
