Greta Van Fleet reacted to their haters in a new Wikimetal interview.
You’re mentioning the classic artists and when I listen to your music, I also see some references from bands from the ’70s, or sometimes artists from the ’90s, but none of them had to deal with such things as social media. None of them had to deal with haters. How do you guys deal with haters or people that say mean things about the band, or don’t understand what you guys are doing?
“We like to stay unplugged from the source if you will because that can definitely get in your head, and I think that’s a really important thing – we have this technology where anybody can say whatever they want at any time.
“And that’s not fair, that’s not fair to anybody to be able to have this very innate, quick, unrefined reaction to something. That’s one of the things about the internet that we haven’t figured out yet because it’s a baby.
“This technology that we have is a baby, and you’re very right that our generation really faces this, we’re looking this right in the eyes.
“This is something that we’ve been bestowed with the older generations but this is something that’s going to land in our court, this is something that we’re going to have to unite, fix, and figure out what our priorities are as a generation, as a new world.”
Yeah, absolutely. And these days, I suppose, another challenge for young artists and young bands is the amount of money that bands are making from streaming services. It’s very little so we see all the time musicians giving up their careers, or people breaking up bands because they can’t make a living. What would you have to say to these musicians that are having a difficult time or not finding a way to have a decent earning from their career?
“I would say whether the storm, hunker down, be patient, find a job in the meantime if you can, do what you can to get by but don’t give up. Because resilience is kind of the story of all of that.
“Khalil Gibran has this wonderful thing that I always think about from the ‘Prophet,’ and it’s essentially the fact that the deeper you dig the trench, the higher you can build.
“Physical music is not so much a thing, from streaming you can’t expect to make any money off of that, it’s all touring, that’s how you can make a living off of this at least.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed their comments.