Not at all.
But I will never allow myself to be placed in that situation again, because I will never ever repeat the critical error in judgment I made that night. That error, my error, cost another human being their life, just as surely as if I had held them down and force-fed them deadly poison.
I should have stopped the show.
Daniel wasn’t the only fan onstage that night. Milan wasn’t the only fan onstage that night. There were several others, the first of whom is seen in the video the police showed in court running across the stage at just over three minutes into our set, before our first song was even finished. Someone jumping onstage was not a singular incident, and it started as soon as the show began. It was obvious that no one was making any real attempt to stop these fans, aside from myself. I should have turned to my band, told them, “We’re outta here,” and walked off that stage.
I should have stopped the show.
Because I didn’t, a young man is dead.
And that is my fault.
Lamb of god had never been to the Czech Republic before. We wanted to make a good impression on our first visit there. I did not know what would happen if we just walked off the stage. I did not know if they would trash the club. Or riot. Or destroy our gear or bus. All of these things are very real possibilities that have happened to bands before. Neither I nor my bandmates spoke their language, and some of them were obviously disinclined to act as if they understood the very clear message I repeatedly put across through both words and actions: Stay off the stage. You are not welcome here. If they would not take the hint that they were not wanted on stage, then what would happen if I shut it down? I had no idea. I didn’t know what would go down if I simply walked off stage and refused to return. It could have been very, very bad.
But none of that sort of speculation really matters at all in the face of this very real fact: a young man would not have lost his life if I had stopped the show. The fans would have been angry, for sure. They would have booed and hissed and the drunker of them would have most assuredly thrown things at us and our crew. They definitely would have complained to the club employees and tried to get their money back. Without question they would have taken to the Internet in hordes and written about what a bunch of spoiled American rockstars we were. And who knows? Maybe they would have gotten violent, and we would have had to fight multiple people—I personally know bands who have had to fight their audience when a show went wrong. Drunken metal heads are not known for their restraint at times, and it’s not like there was anywhere for my band and crew to go hide—security was a joke, and the only thing separating the audience from the tiny backstage area were a few sheets hung from a flimsy pipe and drape rig on the side of the stage.
But I would rather have dealt with that—any of it, all of it—than have to live with the knowledge that a young fan of my band is dead because I did not simply walk off stage and call it quits for the night.
Because that is exactly what happened. That was my error, my mistake, and I will never forget or deny it. I failed in my responsibility as a human being by allowing an obviously out of control situation that was dangerous to both myself and others to continue happening, a situation I could have put a stop to. I was the last link in a disastrous chain of events that could have prevented what occurred from happening, but I failed. So in my eyes, I am morally responsible for that young man’s death.
That is the truth, and it grieves me to no end.
Jeff and I walked from court to the apartment. While Jeff changed out of his suit, I put on a pot of coffee, and waited for Daniel’s mother and uncle to arrive. His uncle had told me earlier that day that they wished to meet with me privately before they left Prague and returned to their home village, and I readily agreed. Jeff asked me if I wanted him to stay during the visit, but I declined. This was something I had to do alone. Jeff went downstairs to wait for them, and they arrived shortly thereafter. He brought them upstairs to our apartment, and then he left, leaving the three of us alone. As I shook Daniel’s mother’s hand, the tears finally came.
I will never discuss in detail what was said between the three of us that day, for to do so would be a betrayal of the trust of these people who never once smeared my name. I will only say that they were very kind to me that day as we sat and talked. They told me what I had long ago guessed from their silence during the media frenzy surrounding my arrest: they did not hold a vendetta against me. They did not wish to see me suffer anymore than I already had, for that would not bring Daniel back. These were not cold-hearted people. They had just wanted to know what had happened to their son. That was it. We both had come to court searching for the truth. Not to hear the opinions of judges and arguments of lawyers, but to try to find that truth for ourselves the best that we could. And after hearing all of the evidence, we had both come to the same sad conclusion. Yet here they were, talking to me openly and without hate in their hearts.
They were two of the strongest people I have ever met.
As they were leaving, Daniel’s uncle turned to me and reiterated something he and Daniel’s mother had brought up earlier.
“Remember—you can be a spokesperson for safer shows. You have that power. Good luck, man. Go live your life.”
I promised them I would, and then they left. I staggered back into the apartment and fell completely apart. I do not know how long I cried, or even what happened for the next few hours. My body was trying to purge all the grief I had held inside for so long, and it seemed to be endless.
The next thing I can remember is going out to eat with my family and entire legal team, who brought their families as well. That evening, for the first and only time in my entire life, I saw my father take a shot of liquor. It would have been bad form not to—everyone else drank one. It was a toast to my freedom.
I drank water.
How strange life can be.
The following day Jeff and I took a train to see the Sedlec Ossuary, the famous “bone church” in the village of Kutná Hora. I walked through the basement of the church, elaborately decorated with bones from the skeletons of over 40,000 people. I took pictures inside the ossuary for a good while, then that evening Jeff and I went out to dinner in a Czech restaurant. We ordered an enormous meal for two, a massive pile of wild game meat and vegetables served in a long wooden tray, and we ate it all. As we waddled out of the restaurant, we saw several copies of that day’s paper hanging on a rack by the front door. On the front page was a large picture of my face and bold Czech lettering spelling my name and something else. I hoped it said “Not guilty.”
The next day we left Prague for America.
Five months passed, and on June 5, 2013, the prosecuting attorney’s appeal was heard by three judges of the Prague High Court. The court upheld my acquittal.
Two months later, on August 19, 2013, I was on a plane in France with lamb of god, about to fly home after a summer European festival run. Right before the plane’s doors were shut, Chris Adler looked up from his phone in the seat across the aisle from me. He had just received an email from Jeff Cohen. The second and final possible appeal to the verdict of my case, one to the Czech Supreme Court, had either not been made within the required two month time period, or it had been denied. I do not know which.
“Jeff says you’re done, dude. It’s over,” Chris said.
The plane doors shut, and we fastened our seat belts. Before too long, we were in the air, flying towards home.
I was, and I remain,
a free man.
epilogue
Lamb of god finished the tour supporting our Resolution album at the end of January of 2014. The tour had begun in our hometown of Richmond, VA almost exactly two years previously, and we finished it in Johannesburg, South Africa. During that two-year period, we played shows on every continent on earth except for Antarctica. Stuck in the middle of this tour was a very stressful year and two months, from the day I was arrested at the Prague airport until the day I sat on the runway
at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and learned that the specter of my return to prison had finally vanished.
It had been a brutal fourteen months.
After the tour ended, I returned to Richmond. After a week or so at home, I kissed my beloved wife goodbye and moved south into a cheap and slightly run-down beach house I had rented. The small house sat on a barrier island where I had spent some time as a very young child, and I knew that the sound of the waves would soothe me while I relived the troubling events in this book as I wrote. I spent too many hours at local thrift stores (as well as the nearest epicenter of all evil, Walmart), buying all the basic necessities I came to realize one needs in a new home; the things a married man such as myself tends to take for granted: throw rugs; can openers; rods for toilet-paper holders; pot holders; bath towels. Then, alone on an island wedged along the seacoast of my childhood, I sat down to finish this book. I had begun writing it while still on the road with lamb of god, but a heavy metal tour is most definitely not conducive to the quiet and solitary atmosphere I have found I require to do serious writing. I needed peace in order to delve deep inside my head and wring this story out, and I was unable to get much work done on the road. It wasn’t until I had walked the deserted beach for a while, a good week or so of allowing myself to just breathe the salty winter air and forget about my band and touring for a bit, that I was able to start implementing the daily stringent self-discipline that writing a book requires.
Besides, I had not wanted to write it in the first place anyway.
Months before even my first appeal had occurred, lamb of god’s booking agent, Tim Borror, had started bugging me about calling a literary agent who was interested in talking to me. I blew Tim off for a bit, because I knew any agent would only want to talk to me about one thing: the story of what had happened in Prague. I ignored Tim’s emails and voice messages as long as I could, until guilt got the better of me and I gave him a call, taking the agent’s contact info. I phoned the agent, Marc Gerald, and told him how I already had a photography book in the works and a publisher lined up. I told him how I had realized even as I was arrested that I would tell this story one day, but that I didn’t think I was ready yet. I told him I just wanted to relax and forget about it all for a bit. I told him that I believed my story had some value, that it might even be able to help someone one day, but that the memories were still too painful, still too fresh.
“Yes, but Randy—the memories are going fade,” Marc said softly.
And with that sentence, spoken in his kind voice, he convinced me to write this book. I had my journal from my time in prison, but even so, my recall would suffer more and more as each day passed. He was right—it was time to put down the memories I still retained on paper, and try to make some sense of what I had gone through.
A few weeks after I sat down by the ocean to write the majority of this book, I agreed to do a few publicity interviews with major press outlets about Don Argott’s documentary, As the Palaces Burn. The film would be in theaters soon, and although I did not want to do the interviews (as I knew all of the questions would be about my experience in Prague, something I was already writing about for hours every day), I agreed, for the movie is not about just me. It is about lamb of god, and being in lamb of god (or any band) is like being in a marriage—if the marriage is to survive, each partner must do his or her part to keep it afloat, even when they don’t feel like it.
I was standing in my kitchen, on the phone with a writer for a well-known New York paper and answering questions about my experience in Prague in a rather matter-of-fact manner when I heard her pause on the other end.
“Randy . . .” she said, trying to formulate her words, “I’m having a hard time . . . getting something out of you. You seem rather . . . cavalier about what you went through, as if it hasn’t really affected you. Like it was no big deal, just something you went through and now you’ve moved on.”
“You mean you are not eliciting the emotional response you are looking for,” I replied.
“Sorta. Randy, I guess what I want to know is how has this experience changed you?” she said.
I told her I was still processing the whole thing, but that I supposed I was a sadder person in some ways—but that was about it. And while what I went through definitely was a big deal to me, it hadn’t changed me or my values at all. I had already changed long before I was arrested that day in 2012.
Most of the people who interview me about Prague seem to be looking for some big “Aha!” moment in the tale of my arrest, incarceration, and trial. They want to nail down a Hollywood-esque scene for their story, an emotional climax where I experience a sudden and blinding flash of insight, finally realizing one of life’s big lessons before moving forward into the gauze-filtered, softly lit warmth of grace and redemption. I do not blame them for trying to find this nonexistent denouement in the story of my ordeal in Prague—they are writers, just like myself. Almost without exception, all of us are searching for the emotional highlight of any story we write as (subconsciously or not) we endlessly attempt to shove every tale into the accepted, formulaic, and monomythic box laid out in Joseph Campbell’s famous work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The essence of Campbell’s universal hero’s journey goes something like this: A hero leaves his everyday life and goes on an extraordinary journey. On this journey, he encounters a difficult obstacle or powerful foe, fighting a great battle against the forces arrayed against him. He wins the battle, then returns as a changed man from his mysterious adventure to his mundane home, bearing a great gift or bit of hard-earned wisdom which he graciously imparts upon his people.
It’s great stuff, and this basic structure can be found in virtually every best selling novel and Hollywood blockbuster. To explain it another way: exposition, rising conflict, climax, falling conflict, resolution. Storytelling 101. It sells a lot of movie screenplays and novel manuscripts. It makes for wonderfully warm and fuzzy feelings as you watch the credits roll and walk out of the theater. We all need those from time to time. It’s called escape.
But life isn’t a movie, or a book (not even this one).
Life is life; and until the very second you die, there is no lasting escape from it. In life, sometimes horrible things just happen. Sometimes there is no new lesson to be learned, only tragedy to be endured the best one can. And sometimes the best a person can do is hang on as hard as they can, keep putting one foot forward in front of the other, and try to do what they know to be the right thing until they reach the end of that particular sad leg of their journey.
Sometimes, life just sucks. I try to deal with it the best I can.
I was talking to my wife about these interviews, telling her about the writers looking for that big, flashy, important moment in my story, and how this frustrated me.
“Honey, what was important to you was to remain the man you had already become,” Cindy said.
A few months ago, I was talking with my father, and the subject of Prague came up.
“I did not try to convince you what to do one way or the other,” he said. “I did not feel it was my place to give you my opinion on whether or not you should return for trial. But I know what kind of man you are, and I know your morals. I knew it would have hurt you badly to not go back. It would have been worse than prison for you.”
For as long as I can remember, I have always known it was important to do the right thing according to the dictates of my conscience, no matter what problem I found myself faced with. This moral imperative sits deep within the core of my being, for I was raised by parents with a very strong sense of right and wrong. The value and necessity of personal responsibility had been instilled in me by those parents, but somewhere along the way I had allowed myself to get lost in a haze of alcohol. When I woke up one morning in Brisbane, Australia and realized that no matter how far I tried to run into a bottle, I would always carry my problems with me . . . I gave up the race. I began to face my problems, to try as hard as I could to live in a manner I cou
ld be proud of, and to take responsibility for my own actions and life.
There is no escape.
So I simply stopped running.
That was the change in me, that was the big “aha!” moment in my life. It wasn’t cinematic, it wasn’t glamorous, and it didn’t happen in a prison cell or courtroom. It occurred as I sat alone and hungover, looking at a bunch of empty beer bottles on a hotel balcony.
This type of moment can happen for anyone. Anywhere and at anytime.
Everything I have done since then has just been me trying my best to follow the correct standard operating procedure, including returning to Prague for trial. I simply committed to what my heart told me was the correct course of action, fumbling my way through what I knew was the right thing to do, even though I was very, very scared to do so. And I’m still putting one foot in front of the other, doing the best I can. That’s all I or anyone can do.
I am not perfect by a long shot, and by no means have I done everything correctly since I have gotten sober. I am learning how to become a better person, but sometimes this is a slow and very painful process. I am just another human being, no better or worse than anyone else on this planet, and as such I still make mistakes. I always will. But I own my mistakes now, and try not to repeat them when I can.
If I could go back in time to that day in Prague, I would walk into that club, take one look at the place, and shake my head. I would go to my band and crew and say to them, “There is absolutely no way we are doing a gig in this dump tonight,” then we would get back on our bus and ride to Poland without playing a note, and a young man from the Czech Republic would still be alive today. Of course, if I could go back in time, I would do all sorts of amazing things. I would prevent the rise of Hitler. I would warn the people of New York City that the World Trade Center was about to go down in flames. I would not be such a self-centered jerk as many times as I have been. I would do many, many things very differently.
Dark Days: A Memoir Page 48
