Artist News

NOFX issue Las Vegas apology

By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 4 June 2018

As promised last week, NOFX have issued a further apology in relation to onstage jokes they made about last year’s Route 91 Harvest festival shooting in Las Vegas. The band had been performing at the Punk Rock Bowling & Music Festival, also in Vegas, when they joked that “you only get shot in Vegas if you’re in a country band”.

In a brief statement last week, frontman Fat Mike said that the comments had been “shitty and insensitive” and promised a longer statement from the band as a whole.

Published on Facebook last night, that statement reads: “There’s no place here to backpedal. What NOFX said in Vegas was shameful. We crossed the line of civility. We can’t write songs about how people in this world need to be more decent, when we were clearly being indecent. Las Vegas has always been a welcoming city to our band, and to make light of the tragedy that occurred there was egregious”.

“All members of the band would like to sincerely apologise to anyone who experienced loss from the Vegas shooting eight months ago, and to anyone who was at our show who lost a loved one or a friend, or who had to witness the incredibly senseless violence that night”, they continue. “We were asked why we didn’t release an immediate apology. Well, we didn’t feel that we could write a sincere apology without reflecting on the actual damage we had done. No press agent was gonna write this for us. That’s why we have struggled with this for the past few days”.

They conclude: “We didn’t plan or intend on saying anything so insensitive. It was off the cuff, but just as hurtful. We won’t blame it on drugs or alcohol or Ambien. That’s too easy. NOFX said it, and we own it. We made a tasteless joke. But to be clear, NOFX does not condone violence against ANY group of people, period!”