Daron Malakian
Daron Malakian
Daron Vartan Malakianis an Armenian–American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer. He is best known as the guitarist, songwriter and second vocalist of the rock band System of a Down and as the lead vocalist, lead guitarist and songwriter of the band Scars on Broadway. Like the rest of the Hollywood-based band System of a Down, he is of Armenian ancestry, but he is the only member to actually have been born in the United States. Daron Malakian is known for...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth18 July 1975
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
When we first started the band here in LA, Janes Addiction was the band we looked up to. They came out at a time when there was a lot of glam rock and hair bands and they got put into that category, but they stood out because they were doing their own thing. We were kind of caught in the same kind of situation at another time: there were a lot of new-metal bands and wed get put into that category even though we didnt fit. Its funny that now theres bands like Mars Volta doing this prog-rock thing thats kinda getting popular, people put us in that genre now. That may be closer to the truth, but I think Hypnotized is going to go further in terms of getting people to understand what were doing.
I guess you'd say I'm a gearhead. It's not just guitars; I have five or six drum sets, a bunch of keyboards... It's like Guitar Center exploded, and all the cool stuff dropped in my backyard. I'm a really lucky guy, I have to admit.
They'd say, 'It kind of sounds like this,' or 'It kind of sounds like that,'
Every song I've written is luck, I think; it's luck - 'How did that just happen?'
In Glendale, where I live, there's a street called Broadway. The bottoms of the light posts have swastikas on them.
I see them both as one record, you know? Not to compare us to, like, THE BEATLES , but the only thing I can compare it to is, like, you listen to the 'White Album' and it's a double album, but, like, they're just a bunch of great songs.
I feel like people have only heard half a record so far,
I don't get it when people complain that baseball games are too long.
I am depressed sometimes, but it's not what keeps me at home or focused on work.
I'll be honest with you: politically, I have no issue with people, but my beef sometimes is with religion at the end of the day.
A lot of MTV's programming is hip-hop based, and the messages are usually all about bling bling. A lot of hip-hop artists sing about stuff that's more important, but they seldom get heard. The ones who get heard are the ones saying, 'Think about yourself. Make your money. It's all you. Everybody have a good time and party.'
It's important not to take yourself too seriously, ... and I think sometimes people take us a lot more seriously than we take ourselves, especially when it comes to politics. Politics, for me, is a reflection of the world I live in. But love is just as important as politics to me. They both exist in the world, you know? And if you don't reflect the entire world around you, then you're leaving something out.
Back in the day, when the emperor or the king or whatever waged war, they went to war, too. But that's been lost in time.
When we were a club band, we always used to say, 'Man, if we ever see success, we'd like to open doors for other people, to push the boundaries and fully contribute something to art, to music, that is going to help it evolve instead of doing stuff for the sake of money or doing stuff for the sake of being popular.