Nasty Bastards Of Rock, Part Three: Wim Butler Of Arcade Fire
There is a simple rule of thumb that up and coming rock stars should keep too: don’t be a dick to Rolling Stone reporters or the Rolling Stone reporter will report it. Thoroughly nasty piece of work and leader of Arcade Fire apparently didn’t get the memo. In an interview being conducted in a cab in Paris Butler got a call from his manager. He stopped the cab and continued to speak on the cell. “This is important,” Butler explained. When the writer still didn’t get the hint, Butler told the writer to get out and drove off.
Not Butler has gone on the record as saying he doesn’t think Arcade Fire should talk to the press and if this is their arrogant attitude they are 100% right.
But the press is the press, what about his peers. this is what Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips had to say about Arcade Fire “We’ve played some shows with them and they really treat people like shit,” he said. “Whenever I’ve been around them, I’ve found that they not only treated their crew like shit, they treated the audience like shit. They treated everybody in their vicinity like shit. I thought, ‘Who do they think they are?'”
That has the ring of an absolute truth, right? but it often ends up with questions as to how a band treats its fans and stories of an arrogant enervated Butler refusing to sign autographs is legion. I had a friend who waited outside Radio City Music Hall for the band after their gig in 2008 (I went to the concert, it was okay nothing great) and they swept right past everybody who was waiting for em.
Butler is a nasty bastard before his time. Lucky for Arcade Fire The Neon Bible was such a great album.
