Photo by Travis Shin
Excerpted from Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir by Mark Morton . Copyright © 2024 by Mark Morton. Available from Hachette Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
I woke up to the sound of yelling and arguing coming from the front lounge of the bus. That wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar occurrence, so I tried to ignore it and get back to sleeping off my drunkenness. But it kept escalating.
“I punched him twice in the center of his face before noticing that he was knocked out cold.”
The commotion was [vocalist] Randy [Blythe], shouting belligerently and indiscriminately at anyone in his field of vision. He was wasted and aggressive. I had seen this behavior in him before when he drank himself into oblivion, and I always dismissed it as simple drunken idiocy. But on this night,
something in me snapped. My frustration of being cooped up in a tour bus for weeks at a time, my feelings of isolation and missing home, my exhaustion, the stress and uncertainty, the commitments I’d made to touring and to the label became more than I could shoulder. It all ignited into a rage that I channeled directly toward Randy, who was still spewing his drunken vitriol in the front lounge.
I rolled out of my bunk and walked toward the front of the parked bus where half a dozen band and crew members were congregated, trying to calm Randy down. Intuitively sensing a storm brewing, Doug had pulled out his camera and started filming the chaos.
Without much thought, I pushed my way straight to the front of the bus where Randy stood berating his audience. I swung hard and punched him squarely in the jaw. “Who fucking hit me?” Randy bellowed, staggering backward and still speaking in his absurd attempt at a Scottish accent.
Seconds after I punched him, I was picked up off my feet and forcefully pulled backward. Our tour manager, Boz, had been trying to deescalate the situation from the beginning. He was well accustomed to our drunken stupidity and was almost certainly looking forward to getting through that last week of shows as smoothly as possible and getting away from all of us for a nice, long break. Boz was a big dude. He had been a lineman on his college football team and though his days as an athlete were long behind him, he could’ve picked any of us up with one hand and tossed us around like a pillow. Which is exactly what he did after he watched me hit Randy.
Boz hoisted me up from behind and started carrying me toward the back of the bus. Now completely off my feet and in Boz’s arms, I lunged forward and swung again, this time even harder. I connected, punching Randy hard in the face. “Oyy! He hit me again!” Randy shouted, still using his Scottish accent. “You fucking asshole!” He now realized it was me who hit him, and he was appalled that this was how I repaid his generosity. “I bought you a drink tonight! Come on laddy, let’s fight!” he yelled from the front of the bus to the back. (Yes, he really called me “laddy.”)
“Let’s go!” I answered eagerly.
“Mark Morton, get ready for the sucker punch!”
The comedic value of telling someone to get ready for a sucker punch didn’t sink in until later. I went out the side door and Randy went out the front. We met on the sidewalk alongside our tour bus and started grappling, with the other members of our tour entourage following behind us to witness the spectacle. Randy and I were still plenty drunk, but he was worse off. We tussled around awkwardly and both lost our balance.
As we fell, Randy rolled me to the side, and we landed hard on the concrete sidewalk with the momentum of our fall and the weight of both our bodies slamming down on my left shoulder. We stood back up and I tried to negotiate a truce as Randy threw multiple wide, swinging haymakers at my head. None of them landed. We grappled a bit more and as we struggled, Randy headbutted me hard in the face. I hadn’t really felt the fall to the sidewalk. My adrenaline had overridden that pain. But the headbutt to the middle of my face hurt. And it pissed me off.
After a few more seconds of tussling, Randy swung again, and this time he connected to the back of my head. Enraged, I reacted with a series of wild, flailing swings and pushed him hard toward a small set of stairs leading up from the sidewalk just behind us. Our drum tech protectively yanked our merch girl, Angie, out of the way. Randy and I hit the stairs, and I immediately flipped him around, slamming him back down on the sidewalk. The back of his head cracked audibly against the concrete. As he landed on his back, I punched him twice in the center of his face before noticing that he was knocked out cold.
I stood up and headed down the sidewalk while the others revived Randy, who chuckled defiantly as he came to. I walked aimlessly for a few minutes and actually cried a little, overcome with a flood of emotions as I processed everything that had just happened.
When I returned to the bus, I walked into the front lounge and saw Randy sitting by himself in the dark at the table drinking a beer. I grabbed a cold beer for myself, cracked it open, took a huge swig, and sat down with him. We looked at each other and started laughing…
The next morning I woke up to the sound of my own loud groans. I could barely move my left shoulder. The pain was excruciating. I was also pretty sure I had a broken a finger on my right hand, but that felt barely noticeable compared to my shoulder. We had driven overnight to Liverpool for our next show at Carling Academy. Once the gear was unloaded, I tried strapping on a guitar, but I could barely hold it, let alone play. The pain was too extreme. I went to see a doctor, and the X-rays determined that I’d torn cartilage in my left shoulder, which happened when we first hit the sidewalk. I’d also broken my finger punching Randy. The doctor gave me a sling for my arm and several
sleeves of unadulterated codeine pills.
“These are very strong,” he warned me. “Take one every four to six hours, and do not
drink any alcohol with these.” Upon returning to the bus from the hospital, I opened a
bottle of red wine and swallowed three of the pills with my first gulp.
“What’d you get?” Randy asked me excitedly, walking in from the bunk area of the bus.
“Codeine,” I replied, guzzling more wine.
“Well hook a brother up!”
His eye was dark blue, and one side of his face was noticeably swollen. He grinned at
me, his hand outstretched and open, waiting for his cut of the painkillers. I happily
obliged his request. That night, with my arm in a sling and drunk on wine and high on
codeine, I watched from the soundboard as Lamb of God performed without me…
I watched three or four songs but couldn’t stand it any longer. I went back to the bus for
more codeine and wine. I sat alone in the back lounge listening to the Mars Volta’s De-
Loused in the Comatorium, a brilliant concept album about a man in a drug-induced
coma.
The irony of the album’s theme was lost on me as I faded in and out of consciousness
in an opiate haze. By the next show at Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff, Wales, I rejoined the
band. Loaded up on painkillers and beer, I limped through our set.
But Mark Morton’s Desolation here
