Escape The Fate Were The Last To Learn Of Max Green’s Departure

June 19th, 2014

Kriston McConnell

Escape The Fate have a knack for making headlines, and not always in the good way. After quite a few lineup changes, the group is down to only one original member, which is Robert Ortiz. Up until recently, founding member Max Green was also a part of the lineup (for the second time, I might add). However, news broke that Green had parted ways with the group. This was something that Escape The Fate wasn’t even aware of until they saw the article about it on Alternative Press. After learning this detail, the publication caught up with Craig Mabbitt and Ortiz to talk to them a little bit about the events leading up to Green’s announcement of his departure from the band as well as him joining Falling In Reverse less than a week later.

You can read the entire interview here, and a short snippet below the break. In a nutshell, it appears as though Green deceived the band as to why he couldn’t make it on the tour with Pop Evil, and used that time away to sign on with FIR. Mabbitt & Ortiz are saying there’s no bad blood between them and Green/FIR, but they are disappointed in the way he handled the situation.

MABBITT: I never accused him of anything. I texted him, “Hey, man, we just got off the stage. Great show tonight. Wish you were here. When can we expect you back?” I never questioned him. It turned into him wanting his suitcase back.

His story was: He had a new suitcase, and the suitcase he put on the bus was old and crappy, and he wanted us to send his suitcase back. If you have a new suitcase, why don’t you just fly out with your new suitcase, [put the stuff from your old suitcase in the new suitcase] and leave the old one on the side of the road? We had people who worked with the band that advised us not to send him the suitcase, and I ultimately decided, “Hey, just send him the suitcase. He wants his clothes.” Apparently, he was already out of state. He wasn’t in LA anymore. We were getting mixed information. Who knows where he was.

So the suitcase gets sent out that afternoon and we hit the stage that night. We were in Indiana. We finally get off the stage, and Kevin—we’re still all sweaty, just got off the stage—was like, “Guys, I don’t think Max is coming back.” And we’re like, “What are you talking about?” He’s just like, “Go on Twitter, and check this AltPress link.” AltPress has this post that Max Green has left Escape The Fate, and he’s not coming back, and he’s leaving us because of musical differences. I remember it ended with, “Escape The Fate have yet to comment.” I was like, “What? You guys know more than we do.” We were so baffled about it. We were like, “Oh my God.”

I felt like the biggest idiot in the world, because I’m the guy that called Max [and asked him to rejoin the band]. He was telling me, “I never thought I would have the chance to be back in the band again! Thank you so much, Craig.” It took some convincing for the other guys to even bring him back in the first place. I was like, “No, it’s gonna be great; the fans are gonna love it. It’ll be good to have Max back. Let’s bring him back.” I definitely felt very, very betrayed. Then within that week of him deciding to leave, it just coincidently happens that he joins Falling In Reverse. They said that it wasn’t planned or anything like that. I mean, I’m not stupid. Robert and I, we were like, “You know what? That’s fine. You [and Radke] have been friends for a while. If you wanna go and be in a band with him again, that’s completely fine.” But the way he went about it is what bothers us.