Marcus King opened up during a podcast appearance about inviting his musical hero Brent Hinds onto his tour following Hinds’ departure from Mastodon. He detailed how a series of bizarre and unhinged dressing room incidents ultimately forced King to fire him from the road.
“Brent and Mastodon kind of had a mutual agreement that he would leave the band, so he was doing his solo thing, and he’s one of my heroes,” King explained. “I was like, ‘I’ll take you out, sure,’ and he just threw it together somehow.”
The situation quickly deteriorated once the tour began. “Then I ended up having to kick him off the tour, which broke my heart. But he kind of forced my hand,” King recounted. “The night in question, I walked outside, and he had this tour manager named Angela, and she was crying, and my tour manager was holding her, and she was crying. I was like, ‘What happened?’ She said, ‘I walked into the dressing room, and Brent was peeing on the floor. I said, “No, no, you have to stop.” So then he peed in his mouth.'”
The story took an even darker turn when King shared the anecdote with fellow musician Matt Pike at Hinds’ funeral. “At his funeral, I told Matt Pike that story. He was like, ‘Yeah … and? That’s normal,'” King said. This highlighted just how well-known Hinds’ erratic behavior had become within certain circles of the music community.
The incident marked a tragic chapter in what had been a meaningful connection between the two musicians. King’s decision to remove Hinds from the 2025 tour came after the guitarist had parted ways with Mastodon following a mutual agreement. Hinds was pursuing solo endeavors at the time. The removal from King’s tour represented a significant setback for Hinds during a transitional period in his career as he attempted to establish himself outside the band that had defined much of his professional identity for years.
The backstage incident that forced King’s hand reflected deeper struggles that Hinds was grappling with during this time. What began as an opportunity for Hinds to perform alongside one of his musical peers quickly unraveled due to behavioral issues that became impossible to ignore or manage. The tour manager’s distress and the explicit nature of the incident left King with no choice but to make the difficult decision to part ways, despite his genuine admiration for Hinds as a guitarist and artist.
The painful nature of this separation weighed heavily on King. He had genuinely wanted to support his hero during a vulnerable moment in his career. The fact that King felt compelled to share the story years later at Hinds’ funeral, only to have it met with resigned acceptance from Pike, underscored how Hinds’ struggles with substance abuse and erratic behavior had become an unfortunate pattern recognized by those closest to him in the music world.
