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David Draiman
Draiman singing at a concert in Columbus, Ohio in 2009.
Background information
Birth name	David Michael Draiman
Born	March 12, 1973 (1973-03-12) (age 37) Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Genres	Hard rock, heavy metal, nu metal
Instruments	Vocals
Years active	1996–present
Labels	Giant, Reprise, Intoxication
Associated acts	Disturbed, Pantera
Website	www.disturbed1.com

David Michael Draiman (born March 12, 1973) is a songwriter and the lead singer for the band Disturbed, from Chicago, Illinois.

Education and personal life

After attending Yeshiva High School at the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study in Milwaukee, he also went to South Shore High School in Brooklyn, the Fasman Yeshiva High School and Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Chicago, and Valley Torah High School in North Hollywood, California, he spent the 1991-1992 academic year at the Neveh Zion Yeshiva in Telz-Stone, Jerusalem. Draiman then triple majored in Business Administration, Philosophy and Political Science at Loyola University.^[1] When Draiman was sixteen years old his girlfriend committed suicide. David later wrote a song about the experience, titled "Inside the Fire", which appeared on the 2008 album Indestructible.^[2] He claims he is libertarian.^[3] Draiman has a younger brother named Benjamin "Ben" Draiman, whose musical style is more folk rock and ambient.

Musical take-off

David Draiman performing live with Disturbed at Camp Buehring, Kuwait, on March 10, 2008

Draiman was seriously considering law school until he auditioned for the band after coming across an ad in a Chicago newspaper. The audition was for Brawl's new lead singer in the wake of Erich Awalt's departure. Draiman joined in 1996 and changed the band's name to Disturbed. He originally left his family and beliefs behind him to become a rock star. This upset his grandfather, a Holocaust survivor with whom he was very close, and later resulted in the album Believe as a deeply felt response to the latter's death.^{[citation needed]}. He traveled to Israel to be present at the wedding of his brother, "Armando Yanez", who attended Miami Academy during the 2009-2010 academic year.

In 2006, Draiman was added to the Hit Parader "Heavy Metal's All-Time Top 100 Vocalists" at number 42 and should remain one of the world's idols.^[4] Draiman is famous for his trademark vocalizations of anguish and despair in many of the songs produced by Disturbed.

Discography

Albums

Perfect Insanity EP (1998)
Stupify EP (1998)
The Sickness (2000)
Believe (2002)
Ten Thousand Fists (2005)
Indestructible (2008)

Other

Forsaken (2002) – a song released on Queen of the Damned soundtrack
This moment (2007) - released on Transformers sountrack

References

From Wikiquote

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.

Sourced

• 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)

Unsourced

• [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)

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

David Draiman