According to Consequence, former At the Drive-In guitarist Jim Ward recently spoke about his firing from the band and his current relationship with his former bandmates. Ward co-founded the post-hardcore band in 1994 with vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala. In 2001, the band broke up, and Ward founded his current band, Sparta. However, he returned to At the Drive-In in 2012 when the band made comeback, only to be fired a few years later in 2016. Ward said in a recent interview that he doesn’t know specifically why he was fired.
“Even if all five of us talked about it, I’m not sure we’d understand what happened,” he said. “What I do know is that I wasn’t in a good place mentally, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t have done my job.”
Bixler-Zavala commented on Ward’s firing at the time, suggesting that the guitarist might have had trouble dealing with his and Omar Rodríguez-López’s explosive success in their own project, The Mars Volta, while the band had been on hiatus.
“His head wasn’t there,” he said. “His head wasn’t trustworthy. Because of the way Omar and I exploded, I completely understood that. You know, you either let it go and keep going forward, or the train goes on without you. We have to honor what is happening now, which is age and the want to do it. I love him. He’s a beautiful human being. A beautiful artist. I just wish he would remember that he’s an amazing guitar player. I don’t know if he does.”
Ward specified that he doesn’t hold anything against his former bandmates. Even noting that, in retrospect, he believes the firing to have been constructive.
“[…] I think getting kicked out, as painful as it was, was probably a blessing in disguise,” he said. “A lot of things have happened since that have been beneficial. It’s why I don’t hold any bad feelings. I still don’t speak to Omar and Cedric but if either of them called me and said they needed a kidney, I’d be on the first plane. I have a connection and a love for them that is beyond any drama.”
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