Davey Havok Artist Bio

David Marchand (born David Paden Passaro, on November 20, 1975, in Rochester, New York) more commonly known by the stage name Davey Havok, is the lead vocalist of the band AFI.

He was born of Italian-American ancestry in New York. At the age of three his father passed away; and as his mother later re-married, he took on the surname of his stepfather; Marchand. When Havok was six years old, he and his family moved from Rochester to Ukiah, California. There, Davey attended Catholic school in Ukiah until the eighth grade.

During high school, his friends Mark Stopholese and Vic Chalker wanted to start a band (which would become AFI). Unfortunately, they had several problems; chief amongst them was that their lack of a drummer, Mark suggested his friend Adam Carson be in the band. Furthermore, they didn’t know how to play any instruments, but they knew that Davey had a good voice, and Adam had a drum set. So Mark learned guitar and Vic learned bass (he was later replaced by Geoff Kresge who would go on to play bass for Tiger Army).

Shortly after high school, the band broke up and Davey moved to Berkeley, California, where he attended UC Berkeley, planning to double major in English and Psychology. He began constantly writing lyrics to songs that would eventually appear on the albums “Answer That and Stay Fashionable” and “Very Proud of Ya”.

In a memorable band reunion,they put together a show that showed that they were actually starting to have fans, the band played at the Phoenix Theatre for several hundreds of fans. They decided to reunite and record an album. In 1995, “Answer That and Stay Fashionable” was released on Wingnut Records (re-released in 1997 on Nitro Records). Geoff left during a tour for “Very Proud of Ya” and was replaced by Hunter Burgan . Hunter would eventually become the permanent replacement for Geoff. Hunter was still in The Force until he permanently joined AFI during the “A Fire Inside EP”. However, before that, AFI released their third full length release, “Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes” , in which Davey started getting very serious about his lyrics. He started singing about religion, humanity and other more serious issues.

The next release was the “A Fire Inside” EP. It featured covers of “The Hanging Garden”, in which Davey got to flaunt Robert Smith influences, and “Demonomania” by the Misfits. Afterwards, Mark was asked to leave the band. His replacement was Jade Puget, the band’s old friend from high school who said he would join after he graduated college. AFI then released their first full length release with Hunter and Jade, “Black Sails In The Sunset”. In fall of that year, they released the “All Hallows” extended play, which has gathered a cult following among the fanbase, and is perhaps their most popular EP.

In 2000, they released “The Art of Drowning” to fair record sales, but great acclaim by fans of the band. The group had toured with one of Havok’s favourite bands, Samhain, on their reunion tour. As a result Havok joined three Samhain musicians, Steve Zing, London May and Todd Youth, they recorded an album under the name Son of Sam titled “Songs from the Earth”, it even featured a guest appearance from Glenn Danzig.

Following his return to AFI, then toured for a few years releasing a few extended plays along the way. In 2003, the band’s first major label release, “Sing the Sorrow” , came out, attaining great record sales with perhaps their most popular single to date, “Girl’s Not Grey”.

On June 6th, 2006, AFI fans rejoiced at the release of the new album, “Decemberunderground” on Interscope Records. Havok, along with AFI, is now on tour promoting the new album.

Glitter Boy Clothing was a short lived fashion line by Havok put together during the Sing the Sorrow era, in collaboration with designers of the Serious clothing line. It was partly inspired by the 70’s glam music scene, among other things. The line was canceled due to creative differences between Havok and Serious. Havok has recently created a new clothing line called Paden, which is set to debut in late August 2007. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.