In a new interview with Bandbond, FEAR FACTORY guitarist Dino Cazares recalled a funny incident from the band’s big tour in the mid-1990s:
“We once toured with MEGADETH and spent about five weeks with them in the US. And right after the tour we went on tour with IRON MAIDEN. And every night we always said into the microphone: “Hey, thanks for having us tonight. Are you guys ready for so-and-so?”, i.e. the headliner show. Then we had just finished the MEGADETH tour. We went on tour with IRON MAIDEN. And our vocalist [Burton C. Bell] says, “Hey, thanks for having us tonight. If you want to come up to the merch table, buy some merch… Blah, blah, blah… Are you guys ready for MEGADETH?” And we were on tour with IRON MAIDEN. And it was really funny, because Steve Harris [IRON MAIDEN’s bass player] was on the side of the stage, and Janick Gers [IRON MAIDEN’s guitar player] was there. And they were laughing at us, they were making fun of us because [Burton’a] had one of those ‘Spinal Tap’ moments.”
Dino also talked about the lessons he and his bandmates learned from spending time on the road with famous heavy metal bands:
“In a way, a lot of the bands we’ve toured with have taught us how to act on tour. Because some of these bands that we toured with were early in our career or in the early stages of it. And to see how they do it, how the professionals do it, was very educational. We gained knowledge of how they know how to control a crowd, how the vocalist talks to the audience, how the guitarist, bassist, drummer move… All those things really inspired us. How they set up their stage, how they set up their equipment. It was all a lot of fun for us because we were still learning. We were like sponges; our minds were like sponges. It was like, “Wow. They did this. Oh, I see, that’s how to do it.” So they all inspired us, and they showed us an interesting way of how they do it, and you could learn a lot from them. So absolutely all of them were interesting to us.”
