Former The Offspring drummer Pete Parada, who was with the punk band for nearly 15 years, has opened up about being booted out of the four piece.
In August 2021, Parada said that he was kicked out of The Offspring for refusing to take the COVID vaccine for medical reasons. Now, the musician has elaborated more about the situation.
“Basically, spring 2021 we put out a new record [‘Let The Bad Times Roll’],” Parade explained on The Culture War With Tim Pool.
He continued, “And so we spent all those months in the spring. I was out in L.A. with everybody, interacting. [Everything was] totally fine. [We were] recording music videos, promotional stuff all through May. Everything was fine; no issues. And then in June, all of a sudden COVID protocol controls, whatever you want, kind of comes to a head. And I get a phone call from their manager.
“It was the most unnecessarily abusive, threatening call I’ve ever received — just screaming at me of, ‘You need to do this.’ And I was, like, ‘Well, you know, I talked to my doctor about it. I have a medical exemption.’ [He] didn’t care. It didn’t matter.”
Parada suggested that he was blindsided by the call, as he said he had made it quite clear in the past that he didn’t intend to take the COVID vaccine.
“It wasn’t a secret that I was not lining up to do this. I just assumed we were gonna have a conversation about, like, ‘Hey, here’s my feelings. Here’s where I’m at with things.’
“I had had gentler conversations with them about my feelings and my thoughts where I was at and my medical history and my concerns about going into this. And the last we left it was, ‘All right. Sounds like we’re gonna have more conversations about this. To be continued.’
“It felt like we had opened a conversation that was gonna keep going. And then, a week later, out of nowhere, I get this call that’s just annihilation. He made it very clear by the end of that conversation that I was to get the shot or I was out… That was the gist of the whole conversation.”
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