“Life is too short. You just gotta move on”—Craig Mabbitt and Telle Smith on “beefs” and unity

Craig Mabbitt (Escape The Fate, the Dead Rabbitts) and Tyler “Telle” Smith (The Word Alive) talk about the importance unity within the music scene in part two of three in our latest artist-on-artist conversation. “It’s not every man for himself,” Smith says, explaining how bands can look out for each other. “We want to help be those people who show that no matter what’s gone on or what rumors or past feelings [may be], life is too short; you just gotta move on.” They also discuss perceived “beefs” of the past between their bands following Smith’s replacing Mabbitt in the Word Alive and how the internet often amplifies animosity, which leads them to pine over the merits of old-school Myspace. “The social media wasn’t where it is now. I feel like it would have been exploding if something like that had happened today,” Smith says. “[Social media] was better and more positive and more accepting. It spread things in a good way for bands.” “I miss Myspace,” Mabbitt says. “Myspace was Twitter, Instagram and Facebook all in one page. You had your comment section (Twitter), your photo section (Instagram) and your player and the links to all the personal band member profiles. It was fantastic. I don’t know why that’s not big anymore.” Mabbitt also delves into the bygone fued between him and Ronnie Radke, who “buried the hatchet” last year. “The difference between the me and Ronnie thing when it comes to me and you,” Mabbit tells Smith “or me and Beau is the fact that you guys were able to go out and perform music while he was just locked up and stewing and all he could do was just say stuff.” Having now rekindled his friendship with Radke, Mabbitt says leaving it in the past was “a great thing to do” and a “very big breath of fresh air; that was a huge weight off my shoulders.” “I wondered what people were going to talk about after [Bury The Hatchet],” Smith jokes. “It was like, ‘Well, fuck. Now what are we going to complain about?” The two further discuss how their bands have always remained intertwined as well as the confusion that surrounds them because of it. “We just wanted people to see that not only are we friends, but we’ve continued to go on and be successful,” Smith concludes. “Some people are confused, like ‘Does this mean you guys are cool now?’ It’s like, ‘We’ve been cool with the exception of a couple months.’”