I’ve had so many people request that I cover Drowning Pool on my channel
and that time has finally come. . Hailing from Dallas Texas, much like the band Tripping Daisy
who i covered a few months back, the link is down below to that video. Drowning Pool
would sprout up in the mid 90’s, but wouldn’t gain national exposure until their hit single
Bodies became one of the biggest hit songs of the summer of 2001. Two events though
would almost derail the band’s career, one was the 9/11 attacks, and the other, was the death
of one of their lead singer Dave Williams members. Today let’s explore what happened.
Drowning Pool was formed in Dallas, Texas in 1996 by Guitarist C.J. Pierce and drummer
Mike Luce (Loose). The band took its name from the Ross MacDonald's 1951 novel of which was
eventually into a film starring Paul Newman. CJ and Mike were originally from New Orleans
and had played together for almost a decade together before deciding to move to Dallas.
CJ would tell Designer Magazine that New Orleans was a difficult city to get gigs in
because bar owners wanted bands to play cover songs and the pair wanted to perform their own
original material. In addition to that they found it difficult to find like minded players
CJ would tell Just a Rock and Roll Junkie Mike moved to Dallas for like two years and
that's where he met Stevie. Mike came back to New Orleans and we were looking for a bass player and
a singer and Stevie was looking to put a band together as well and it just made sense to move
to Dallas in 1996. The music scene was kicking ass with Pantera tearing it up" he'd remember
The band played with a few different frontmen before Dave Williams entered the picture around
1998. Williams himself was a veteran of the Dallas music scene having performed with numerous bands
over almost a decade playing in outfits named Cheri Lane and Mister Lovedog. One of his friends
early in his career was Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell who gave Williams the nickname "Stage".
Drowning Pool’s influences would include a broad spectrum of old school rock rock bands
including Iron Maiden, Motley Crue, Ratt, Van Halen, Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row, Cinderella,as
well as Black Sabbath and more current acts at the time including local heroes Pantera.
Of course there was another band the quartet liked as Williams would tell hiponline in 2001
"I think the one bonding question that brought us all together and that was if we liked Faith
No More. After that, the rest is history and we’ve been together for three years" he'd say
Bassist Stevie Benton would tell Ghost Cult Magazine about how the band started out
as just a fun project with no too much forethought We had been a club band in Dallas for a couple of
years before it all started, we never thought we would do anything more than that to be honest,
we were just playing during the week-ends for beer money. All of the sudden more and more people were
crowding in the venues where we were playing and then it felt almost like a blink of the eye.
Before the band even got their first major record deal, the band attracted the attention of german
liquor company Jaegermister who sponsored the group . Williams would tell Billboard
magazine “it boosted our confidence quite a bit because all of a sudden it was like wow
somebody likes our band. It felt good and then right after that we signed with Wind
Up so it was like the machine is rolling now. ” Mike Luce would tell Designer Magazine what came
next revealing “We did a demo at a friends house back in Dallas and we were just playing local
gigs. Then one of the guitarists for sevendust was living in dallas, saw us and we just kept bugging
him to let us do a couple of openers for them. We did three or four shows in a couple of states down
south.” It wasn’t too long after these dates that Drowning Pool started touring with groups like
Kittie and their demo they recorded to get radio airplay. It would be during this time the band
also cut a pair of EP's & the band would soon be hailed by mtv and rock radio as the next big thing
thanks in part to their second EP “Pieces of Nothing.' They would soon sign up with Wind up
records and their first major release would be the album Sinner, which would come out in June
of 2001, The album’s popularity was boosted by the band’s best known track and single ‘Bodies,
The song soon became one of the biggest songs that summer peaking at number 6
on the billboard mainstream rock tracks chart & the band got even a further boost
after they were added to the 2001 lineup for traveling tour Ozzfest. The album would derive
it’s arm from a tattoo williams had on his arm. According to the orlando sentinel Drowning Pool
would be playing their set at 10 in the morning on the third stage at Ozzfest, but by the end of
the tour they were considered the breakout act and they soon moved to the main stage.
The success of both the single bodies and their spot at ozzfest had a lot to do with raising
the band’s profile and pushing their debut album Sinner to sell over 1.5 million copies.
But there was another important factor most people don’t know about.
Williams told billboard that Wind Up records and i quote “promoted the record in the most
perfect way possible.” According to billboard the band’s label would hire
kids who were fans of the band and they were known as street teamers or “Drowning Victims.”
Billboard would claim1,500 so called drowning victims were hired by the label to spread the
word about the band. One person who was part of the marketing strategy was a 23 year old kid named
michael gorko who worked at mcdonalds. People like him would wear Sinner buttons on his job
and build buzz about the band to coworkers and customers. Another street teamer would write
the band’s web address on dollar bills and give them out to people. The WWE also helped
get the word out by licensing the band’s song Bodies and other tracks from Sinner..
The music video for bodies saw the band performing in a psych ward.
Williams would tell Spin Magazine: “We thought it would be cool to
run around an insane asylum for eight hours ” Sinner would be peppered with William’s thoughts
on organized religion and its shortcomings, a personal reflection on his upbringing. But
while many people point to the scripture as being flawed, Williams didn’t see it that way,
instead pointing the finger at people telling the Orlando Sentinel.
"It wasn't so much focused on a belief so much as a single man, the preacher.
All of a sudden, that guy becomes the focus, and that's not the way it is."
He would tell the paper he remembered being a young kid and being in Church and hearing his
preacher tell the congregation to smash their televisions because messages from satan were
being broadcast on them. He would recall "My dad looked at me and said, 'There's a Cowboys game at
noon and I don't think that's going to happen.' " In a separate interview Williams would tell Hit
Parader "I have nothing against religion--I just have a problem with some of the messages
that it promotes. Religion doesn't seem to have much flexibility. They have to
recognize that all people can't follow the same set of rules. We've all broken some of
those rules at one time or another. In the eyes of religion that makes us all sinners."
Because of the religious themes on the band’s debut album they were sometimes compared to label
mates Creed, but Williams pushed back against those comparisons telling the Sentinel" I've
never met Scott, but my take as a listener and fan is that Scott, through his lyrics,
is still looking for an answer. I'm throwing my hands up and saying you need
to show me something. I've made up my mind." He would also reveal in the same interview he
counted himself a fan of sarah mgclaughlin and the backstreet boys telling the same paper
"When I've been feeling bad about anything, her voice makes it all seem better.
She's just a good songwriter." At the same time, he also sees
humanity in the Backstreet Boys saying. "There's something about those guys that
seems a little more down-to-earth and not just thrown together. The guy A.J. [McLean],
who had to go to rehab, I feel bad for him and his family. When I heard that,
I thought, 'Wow, he's a real person.' " Shortly after 9/11 the band’s hit "Bodies"
was removed from Clear Channel owned radio stations because of the line "Let
the bodies hit the floor" as radio programmers judged that it was too insensitive after what
happened in 9/11 Williams would respond to the controversy telling the the same paper.
"It hurt us a little bit,". "We were pretty much riding this great wave,
then this happened, which nobody planned on. It's about being in the mosh pit,
but we sympathize and understand why people might misunderstand. We're Americans too,
so if not playing it for a week or two helps people get through it, we're all for it."
But the newspaper reported by October 27, of 2001 that the song was soon back on the airwaves. It
was at this time they were touring with Disturbed. The band’s second single "Tear Away" a song that
deals with individualism and dealing with one’s needs would be shelved by the label who decided
it was too divisive for these sensitive times. By the summer of 2002 the band would find
themselves back on Ozzfest. Drowning Pool was riding high, but it was about to come
crashing down. On August 14th, 2002 the band’s vocalist Dave Williams' was found unresponsive
on the band’s tour bus in his bunk by their tour manager and guitar tech.. The band was in Manassas
Virginia on route to their next show. They had performed the previous night in Noblesville,
Indiana. It was initially speculated in the media that his death was tied to drugs or
alcohol. But it would eventually come out that his death had nothing to do with either of those,
but rather an undiagnosed heart condition called a cardiomyopathy, it would be the
same condition Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash almost died from in the early 2000’s. It’s a
medical issue in which the heart muscle from pumping enough blood to the rest of the body.
The band’s manager would put out a statement on the band’s website after the toxicology report
came in wriing "The band and crew were not up drinking like frat boys, taking drugs etc.,"
"We were watching DVDs and I even shut Dave's bunk T.V. off at 5:00 a.m. to the
sound of his snores,""It's no secret Dave loved to drink and enjoy life but this was
not the night of hardcore parties...He would go on to claim dave also wasn’t a drug user.
And Williams would pass away at the young age of 30.
There were however signs that something was wrong with Williams health before his death. .
CJ Pierce would tell just a rock n roll junkie that Williams was one of those guys who would
never went to the doctor for anything. He was complaining about chest pains two weeks before
but he thought he pulled a muscle. He jumped off the stacks at Ozzfest and he ran into me and was
about to push me off the stage. I didn't realize he had jumped off the stacks and he thought he had
pulled something and that wasn't it at all. A public were was held August 18 in Plano,
Texas, and at that time plans for a DVD chronicling Williams' life was announced.
His friends and fans remembered him as one of the most genuine and nicest musicians around.
By late 2002 that long awaited documentary chronicling Williams life was finally released.
It was announced that the first $250,000 in sales from the DVD,
would be used to buy Williams parents a retirement home, a long dream of the singer.
The band’s label Wind-Up records would end up reaching out to fans to provide video footage
and photo graphs in addition to personal accounts to help facilitate the DVD.
Former tourmate David Draiman of Disturbed would put out a statement that summarized a
lot of his fellow musicians feeling saying ""He was very much from the Phil Anselmo school,
but with a smile. He was the sweetest man you'll ever come across in your life," "[He] didn't have
a bad bone in his body. ... Everyone loved him. Despite all his success Williams never seemed to
forget where he came from. A 21 year old fan from his hometown Princeton Texas would write to MTV
"Every time he came back to town, he would visit the school and say hi to everyone. I thought that
was so cool of him. I never saw him turn down an autograph or a hug from a screaming fan.
He loved what his music had made him and used that to change a lot of people's lives.
He gave a lot of people the chance to say, 'I have met a superstar!' "
Following Williams passing, the band would take about four months off, but there was never a
question of whether Drowning Pool would continue. Benton would reveal according to blabbermouth
"When Dave died, we lost our best friend in the world," "The last thing that I'd like
to think is that my other best friends, I'd have to leave them, too, because we couldn't
carry on together. That would just suck." Benton would tell the Chicago Tribune "We
were at the pinnacle of our career," says bassist Stevie Benton. "We went from the
happiest we'd been to the most devastated." The surviving members of the band retreated
to Houston, staying up for a year in a suburban apartment, rarely venturing out and subsisting
mainly on pizza from a restaurant on the building's first floor. The members decided to
continue the band under the Drowning Pool name as a way of maintaining Williams' legacy, but
their initial attempts to audition a new singer proved unsuccessful. Benton would tell the Tribune
"We wanted to get a process started, but those first few guys didn't have a chance,"
The band would end up enlisting three singers who served their own separate stints with the band
including Jason Jones, Ryan McCombs, and Jason Moreno.
Since Williams passing the band would end up releasing several follow up albums
all of which charted on the billboard charts, but none of which were as successful as Sinner.
That does it for today's video guys thanks for watching. Be sure to hit the like button
and subscribe and we'll see you again on rock n' roll true stories. Take care.