Last week, footage of Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard storming off stage during a set in Charleston, SC went viral. The frontman was seen ripping off his earpiece, knocking down his microphone stand, and leaving the stage before finishing “Soul Meets Body”; their last song of the evening. The rest of the band followed the singer off stage, but returned to finish their set.
As with anything, speculations began as to what led to Gibbard storming off the stage. As it turns out, the musician leaving the stage was “a non-story” which was attributed to a lot of things going wrong at the same time. Over the weekend, the band performed at the Firefly Music Festival in Dover, DE with bassist Nick Harmer sitting down with Billboard for an interview. During the interview, Harmer explained that equipment failure and a fight breaking out at the front of the crowd were just some of the contributing factors to the viral video.
“It’s kind of a non-story really,” begins Harmer. “It got spun as [if] we left the stage mid-set. It was the last 20 seconds of the last song and all of Ben’s equipment failed at the exact kind of unrelated moment there was a giant fight in front of us. We would’ve finished the song but we’re all feeling a little skittish after Orlando and things were just — we weren’t sure what was happening.”
“Suddenly, there was this moment in the crowd where we don’t see this kind of energy happen in front of us,” Harmer continues. “It’s kind of scary, so we stop as a band thinking somebody’s hurt or something’s happening, but that also just happened to coincide with the same other thing that was happening with Ben and all of his gear problems.”
And there you have it; a non-story. Death Cab for Cutie are currently in the middle of a summer tour, performing at a slew of summertime music festivals for the next coupe of weeks.
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