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Bird Flies Away Appearing on stage for the last time with his (now former) band THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT, vocalist CLINT BOGE is relieved to be putting the final unhappy chapter in the band’s 12-year story behind him. In February, it was announced that Boge would be leaving the band ‘to pursue other musical interests’. His other band, Thousand Needles in Red, has been extremely active over the past few years. Plus he is shortly to release a solo record, which might surprise many Butterfly Effect and Thousand Needles fans. But to lay the blame for his departure on his diverse musical interests is far from the truth, as Boge told ROD WHITFIELD. “Yeah, it’s bittersweet for me,” begins Boge. “The thing that I’ve been saying to people in all the interviews is that I’ve left the band to ‘pursue other musical interests’. That’s just a polite way of spinning it. I was pursuing other musical interests while I was in the band. I don’t want to insult [Reverb] readers by having them think that — I want to put forward my side of the story, so people don’t sit there thinking ‘Clint’s left this perfectly good band that was working harmoniously’ — that just wasn’t the case. I left because the relationships had got to the point where I thought that staying any longer would have pushed them to a darker and much nastier place. I feel that getting out when I did was not only the correct thing to do for me, but also [meant] that we could do a final tour, and still sit in a room together. “But mainly I just wanted to say to the people reading this that I didn’t leave a perfectly good band that was functioning and firing on all cylinders. I’m leaving something that I feel is no longer true in its course, and has diverted off it quite
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substantially because of one or two people’s wants — selfish wants. Rather than looking at it in terms of ‘why are we here, what are we writing, who’s listening to our music and what is relevant?’, they’ve totally pushed that to the side, and they’ve concentrated on their own agendas, and I think they’re wrecking the band. “I’ve said it in many arguments in the band room, ‘what are you doing, where are you going, where are you taking it?’. You’re driving this amazing thing, that we all worked really hard on, into the ground, and taking no duty of care, especially when it comes to thinking about the fans that listen to the music.’ And that was another thing that I got quite emotional about — it’s no longer about the fans, it’s about our own agendas. Somewhere along the line this selfloathing crept into the band. Not by me, can I just say for the record. I loved The Butterfly Effect. It’s not something that I fuckin’ throw away easily, and to suggest that I frivolously went ‘oh fuck it, I’m just going to go and do Needles now’, is
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bullshit. It’s insulting man. I don’t want to get all negative and shit, but it’s just disheartening. “It got to the point where I felt they were no longer my brothers, and the more I questioned it, the further away they got from me. There was the comment, ‘this is business man, I don’t need to be your fuckin’ friend’. That broke my heart. Only we know what went down. There’s my side, their side and the truth. There’s three sides to every story. “[But] to look on the positive side of things, we worked really hard — we were in each other’s faces for a long time. To last 12 years of hard core touring — I think we got over a thousand gigs under our belt — that’s roughly a hundred gigs a year, one gig every 3.5 days, that’s quite a feat in itself. I mean a hard rock band in Australia? There’s not even that many places to bloody play! We’ve done extremely well, and I’m proud of everybody’s effort to make it this far, so that’s the yin to the yang of it. That’s the positive out of the negative.”
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“So it’s onwards and upwards. I’ve got Needles still going. I’m going to release a solo album this year as everybody does when they leave a band. It’s going to be pretty laid back — sweeping orchestral stuff, more acoustic, maybe even bordering on adult-contemporary. Singer/songwriter sort of stuff — a bit of a departure for me... so heaps of positive things out of this.” “I feel a lot lighter in my heart, and I wish them all the best. But I think to continue without the voice and the face of the band, good luck to ‘em. If they do it and they get bigger and better, there you go — the proof will be in the pudding. They can give me the finger and say ‘fuck you, buddy!’ [laughs].” The Butterfly Effect, with Numbers Radio and Greenthief in support, perform at the Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay, on Wednesday May 2; Coolangatta Hotel on Thursday May 3; Plantation Hotel, Coffs Harbour, on Wednesday May 9; Newcastle Panthers on Thursday May 10.
reverb magazine issue #069 — May 2012 23