Bobby Liebling, lead singer of Pentagram , needed a police escort at concerts because he started getting surrounded by people. Currently, Pentagram is experiencing an unexpected resurgence in pop culture thanks to a video of the musician looking somewhat distracted on stage that went viral on TikTok.
In an interview with the website Altars Of Metal , Bobby Liebling said that he gets stopped wherever he goes by the most random people: [transcription via Metal Injection ] “The whole thing blew my mind at first. It was pretty weird. I always dreamed of maybe one day posting on Instagram or Facebook and going viral.
“Be careful what you wish for, because things kind of blew up faster than I expected, for sure. But it was pretty cool, you know? And it’s a lot of fun, playing music for over half a century and then becoming famous for being a joke,” the vocalist joked.
Memes featuring their peculiar expressions took over social media, generating engagement and propelling the band to a new audience: “The band's visibility skyrocketed immediately, which was pretty obvious.”
“We've been stopped at airports by TSA agents, and we've been stopped on planes by pilots coming out of the cockpit to greet us, and mothers of soccer players at the airport, and groups of small children and things like that. It's pretty crazy, man. I really didn't know how to react, and I still kind of don't, because everywhere we go, there's someone [saying]: 'Aren't you that guy?'”
Pentagram using police escort at shows
Despite going viral, Bobby said that the current fame hasn't contributed much to the band's profits, since the scheduled tour dates were already sold out: "When it happened, we were already on tour, so sales didn't increase much or anything, because the tickets were actually sold out when we did the West Coast tour, which is when it happened. And then the South American tour , which also had almost sold-out tickets."
But it was during the tours that everything turned crazy: “So, I don’t know how that really escalated the situation with the audience, but it went through the roof. It was a trip. People were pushing themselves, trying to get through the crowd. And you had a police escort surrounding you to get to a van when you left a show. It was crazy, man. It still is.”
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