The Offspring’s former drummer, Pete Parada, recently addressed his controversial 2021 dismissal from the band in an Instagram post.
“Many of you have asked for this, given recent events: screenshots of my final communication with my former band,” he wrote, sharing messages he sent to his ex-bandmates. “It was in response to one of my bosses emailing me gobsmacked by my audacity to speak publicly about what had happened. His email to me came a month after they had cut off all contact with me and a day after I had released my statement.”
Parada continued, “I won’t share the words he wrote under the assumption of privacy – that feels like a low blow. But I will reveal my own words – which have never received a response. We went on a roller coaster of negotiations. I was suggested a fake card by one of my bosses, then threatened and belittled by their manager who made it clear that if I did not get vaccinated they would move on without me, then I was offered the option of being temporarily replaced, when I gratefully accepted that offer – I quickly found out it was simply a last ditch effort to get me to cave at the thought of being replaced.”
He added, “I was told I was ruining all of their plans and throwing away my entire career over disinformation, and then reassured it wasn’t personal, then all communications were cut off, then my flight to rehearsal disappeared and my access to the band calendar was revoked. This is not the behavior of people who are in fact ‘holding the door open.’ They want to split the hair: nobody technically said the words ‘you’re fired.'”
Parada also stated, “Seems like a pretty meaningless and disingenuous distinction. Cutting off all contact and removing access to all band activities speaks for itself. This might be a clever way to avoid accountability on paper, but the end result is still the same: I had a job, and then I didn’t. I really hope this puts an end to the confusion.”
In the screenshots he shared, Parada explained why he chose not to get vaccinated against COVID-19. He also wrote, “I didn’t realize I needed to give a heads up. Nobody in your camp ever gives me a heads up about anything, like booking a show in Nashville – which had my phone blowing up before I was ready to talk about any of this. But I get it, I’m irrelevant now. I’m also not the one who quietly cut off all communication; I had to find out from my Southwest Airlines App that my flight to rehearsal had been cancelled.”
After leaving the Offspring, Parada was replaced on tour by Josh Freese and officially in 2023 by Brandon Pertzborn. He had refused the COVID-19 vaccine due to his Guillain-Barré syndrome, fearing it could trigger his condition again, despite having already recovered from the virus.
Photo Credit: Pete Parada – Instagram
