Former Mumford & Sons Member Left Band to ‘Speak the Truth’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Former Mumford & Sons member Winston Marshall says leaving the band gave him his “soul back.”
“For 14 years, I was in a band called Mumford & Sons, which I founded as a teenager,” he began in a video for PragerU.
Marshall took up the banjo and began playing in different bands. He eventually started Mumford & Sons along with the rest of his bandmates. Things began to take off, and Mumford & Sons became world-famous, winning awards and meeting musical icons like Bob Dylan.
“I haven’t worked out how to articulate those moments because it was such a whirlwind,” Marshall explained, adding that many people in his position turn to drugs and alcohol.
He continued, “People want to maintain the high that they had on stage and they’ll carry on going. I was a very heavy drinker at the time…some other things were happening. I wanted to feel like I understood everything that was going on around me, to make sure I remembered everything…so I decided to stop drinking all [doing] all drugs. I’m now 6 years sober.”
To fill the time that he was no longer drinking, or recovering from a night of partying, Marshall said he began reading books.
“The pandemic came along and then I was like, ‘Well, I’m just going to share on my social media what books I’m reading to my not-many followers I have on Twitter,’” he said. “One of the books was by Andy Ngo, a very brave journalist documenting BLM and Antifa. I tweeted about this book [and] it ended up [being] the No. 1 trending thing on Twitter for two days.”
He continued, “I issued an apology…because I was seeing how upset everyone was. I wanted to put the fire out and I didn’t want to lose everything I had worked 14 years for.”
After issuing the public apology, Marshall began researching the topics further and realized he regretted not standing up for himself and his beliefs.
“I came closer to the conclusion that I’d actually not done anything wrong. Worse still, that the act that was wrong was the apology; an apology which was essentially what I would eventually conclude was participating in the lie,” he explained. “It was clear to me that the only way forward was I could stand by what I believed, but it meant it was not tenable to work with the band. I wanted to protect them. It wasn’t fair on them to suffer because of what I believed.”
Marshall left the band, which he said was “an unbelievably difficult decision to make.”
“I don’t regret it,” he continued. “As soon as I retracted the apology…a weight was off my shoulders and I got my soul back.”
READ MORE: MUMFORD & SONS BAND MEMBER LEAVES AFTER TWEET CONDEMNING THE ‘FAR LEFT’
A portion of Marshall’s public statement about leaving Mumford & Sons reads, “The truth is that my commenting on a book that documents the extreme Far-Left and their activities is in no way an endorsement of the equally repugnant Far-Right. The truth is that reporting on extremism at the great risk of endangering oneself is unquestionably brave. I also feel that my previous apology in a small way participates in the lie that such extremism does not exist, or worse, is a force for good.”
In an interview with The Free Press, Marshall shared, “My faith has played a big part in this period of my life and actually the week before making the final decision, I was pretty much planted in my local Catholic Church around the corner from the house. It’s a bloody big moment for me. That’s probably why after a while, the apology was bothering me like it did, particularly that I’d felt like I’d been participating in that lie that we already talked about. I couldn’t square those things in my conscience.”
Today, Marshall hosts his own interview show, which he calls “so much fun” and “rewarding.”
“It’s no way to live, with your mouth shut,” Marshall concluded. “I made the choice to just speak the truth.”
READ MORE: MUMFORD & SONS MEMBER WINSTON MARSHALL: ‘I GOT MY SOUL BACK’
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