David Draiman

David Michael Draiman was born March 13, 1973 in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, USA to a Jewish Orthodox family. He is the lead singer for the band Disturbed, which hails from Chicago, Illinois.

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• I would like to thank a world that never understood or accepted me, family and friends that never believed in me, and a God with one hell of a sense of humor. You have all made me what I am today. Let that weigh heavily on your consciences.
  • sleeve notes, The Sickness (2000)

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• [I'm] Very positive about the internet, Napster. I think it's a tremendous tool for reaching many more people than we ever could without it. When you release music you want it to be heard by people. Artists really want to have their music heard. They want to have their creation heard by people. Nothing is going to do that better than Napster. I can't tell you how many kids have come up to me and said, "I downloaded a couple of tunes off Napster and I went out and bought the album." Or they say, "I want to come see you play." I don't really make money off of record sales anyway.

• This is not rocket science. Instead of spending all this money litigating against kids who are the people they're trying to sell things to in the first place, they have to learn how to effectively use the Internet. For the artists, my ass... I didn't ask them to protect me, and I don't want their protection.

• It's that iconic imagery of that sea of raised fists during a live performance. It's a symbol of unity and strength and at the same time there are elements of defiance and rebellion that are inherent in that raised fist symbol. It's just one of those iconic pieces of imagery from the life of rock 'n' roll.

• I think that he's probably one of the more enigmatic frontman of our time. He's tremendously inspirational to vocalists throughout the genre including myself. I know that there's some weirdness regarding the "incident," but I certainly know that Phil would have never in his darkest thoughts ever have wanted any harm to befall Dime. You know the world is a very, very extreme place. When a fan gets so connected to a band that the demise of the band, however they want to interpret it, leads them to question their own lives and their existence...I mean it's weird. There are too many types of music that inspire that passion in people and thankfully metal is one of them. It's just unfortunate that this animal happened to take the demise of Pantera so seriously that he felt that it was justification for him to do what he did. He took the life of probably one of the greatest guitar players to walk the face of the Earth.

• There's always going to be the simple quality that whenever you hear one of our songs you'll know it's us.

• I think [Shout 2000] is a masterpiece. We did want a song that is completely opposite to our sound, you know, coming from a completely different direction, but yet at the same time has the same meaning, has lyrics like something written by Disturbed. "Shout" is perfect for it. It's about voicing your displeasure and yelling it out, shouting it out, not sitting back and taking it. But if you remember when "Shout" was written – it's an '80s pop song from England – things were softer then. I think it really blends in well with our other songs and we play it almost every night and our audiences love it... Curt Smith told us that he thinks now finally the song has the aggression he envisioned when he wrote the lyrics. Wow, that was such a great compliment. We were floored. We could hardly believe it.

• They are children but unfortunately "Two Worlds" ended up being the dyslexic, ADD stricken mongoloid child…it’s a special child.

• ...In life I was your friend, now I'm just a dead guy with cool chains. (Imitating Butthead)