The frontman of The Dillinger Escape Plan once shat in a bag in front of thousands of people and got so high he forgot who he was. Greg Puciato has plenty to confess…
How do you feel about being remembered for shitting on the main stage at Reading Festival in 2002?
“It’s a fairly extreme thing to do, so I get it that people who aren’t more versed in music, that’s the one thing they remember. But who cares? If you do something that extreme in front of that many people, what do you expect?”
What’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever bought yourself?
“The same thing most people buy – a house and a car. I bought a Lamborghini with a solid gold dick on the front of it.”
What’s the worst fight you’ve ever been in?
“I’m an adult, I have no motivation to be in a fight. I don’t need to prove anything to anyone, I’ve been hit in the face with enough guitars that I don’t need to get punched by another dude to test myself.”
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen while high?
“I thought Ben [Weinman, guitar] and I were the same person. I had a major, major breakdown of my perception of myself as an individual and I saw people as being like a big gas cloud, and every person is a bubble in that gas cloud. And if the bubble pops you’ll die and you’ll just return to the gas. So it’s insane that people have this concept of ego and individuality to the point where they start to block out everyone else, because we’re actually the same person.”
So perhaps a life-changing moment?
“I think there was a really big realisation that the people I was surrounding myself with, and the roles that they have in my life and my preconceptions of them were reflecting off of myself. That was a huge growing point for me as an individual, the destruction of ego that happened.”
When was the last time you were totally starstruck?
“I don’t get starstruck. And I actually hate when people do because it makes me feel like they don’t have self-belief. If you are making an idol out of another person, you’re telling yourself that you can never be on a level with that person. I do understand being in awe of someone’s accomplishments, but the only time I’ve ever had a moment when I was starting to lose my cool was meeting James Hetfield. And that’s just because …And Justice For All meant so much to me, it was hard to comprehend this person that I’d never met had such an influence on me.”
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Have you had any onstage disasters?
“I’ve had injuries, but they’re not disastrous any more, they’re just inconvenient.”
Have you got any irrational fears?
“I have a big fear of getting a brain tumour. My family doesn’t have a history of it or anything, I just feel like I’m a very healthy person, so the only thing I’m afraid of is things that I can’t see. There’s a lot of people in music that have had brain tumours; Chuck Schuldiner of Death, James Murphy in Testament. It’s headbanging and screaming; how many times can you bust a blood vessel in your brain from screaming before it develops some sort of weird mutuation? I’ll drill it out myself if it’s in there.”
Have you ever had a really weird experience with a fan?
“We’re pretty lucky, we’ve a lot more really dedicated fans than normal bands because we’re hard to get into. But it’s usually pretty healthy. The weirdest fans that we have are the ones who come from someone else who attracts that level of superfans, like Mike Patton. The run-off we get from those people, the super-weirdos, are the strangest. They’re so into them that they became fans of anything that they’re affiliated with. By the time they get to us they’re just on a level of weird that you can’t comprehend.”
Have you ever been arrested?
“Yeah, but not for anything cool. It was just something stupid, forgetting to pay a ticket and getting pulled over for speeding and having them be like, ‘Hey, you have a warrant out for your arrest because you didn’t pay this ticket.’ I didn’t even know about it because I was on tour.”
What’s your most disgusting personal habit?
“I leave gum everywhere. I stick it places and forget about it. But I’m not really that much of a revolting person.”
