Rock'n'roll Survivors

On Preparation, Ruination, Dedication & Taking Care of Yourself

The Runaway’s eccentric visionary (and utterly creepy) manager Kim Fowley used to prepare the band for the endurance sport of gigging while female in the 1970s by throwing things at them while they rehearsed. Prescient move, as Joan Jett recalls being hit by a car battery thrown at her onstage during one show.

Touring can be like an Olympic sport in many ways, on both ends of the scale. When you’re a small independent band/artist and there’s little money to soften the hard blows that come with traipsing from gig to gig, always moving, always leaving, packing, and losing things - you’ll be catching the worst and earliest flights, lugging the heaviest loads and staying in the most inhospitable or inconvenient places - not to mention eating poorly, and often doing all of this extremely hungover. And sometimes paying for the privilege and wondering why the hell you even did it at the frazzled end of it all. Oh yeah, for the music!

When you’re a bigger artist with a lot of people depending on you, pressure is huge and expectations are high. You might be fed properly and sleeping in a sweet safe pillowy bed but the relentless preparations and giving your all onstage, followed by endless celebrations, people, parties and travel can truly take their toll.

Taylor Swift got in tour shape for her Eras tour by giving up alcohol months before it began and singing through her entire 40 song set every day on a tread mill. When I read that, something clicked and made sense. Performing and touring are so physically demanding, and it’s inspiring to see musicians working out that preparation and dedication to taking care of yourself can be the key to surviving and thriving.

Taylor’s Eras shows run for 180 minutes (90 minutes more than the standard concert) and include 16 costume changes, pyrotechnics, choreography and optical illusions. She told Time Magazine ‘I knew this tour was harder than anything I’d ever done before by a long shot. I finally, for the very first time, physically prepared correctly… I know I'm not drinking on tour. I know I'm working out in between shows. I know I'm keeping my strength and stamina up. I know I'm going on that stage whether I'm sick, injured, heartbroken, uncomfortable, or stressed. That’s part of my identity as a human being now. If someone buys a ticket to my show, I’m going to play it unless we have some sort of force majeure.’ She says that attempting to do that show hungover is a world she ‘doesn't want to know’. Between shows Taylor allows herself a ‘dead day’ to recover where she says “I do not leave my bed except to get food and take it back to my bed and eat it there”.

Beyonce has a similarly hardcore tour prep. You can try it for yourself here.

A Brian Jonestown Massacre show in Melbourne last month turned into a disturbing train wreck debacle, with band leader Anton Newcombe hurling abuse at audience and musicians and ending in an onstage brawl - perhaps not surprising after making it through 50 dates of a gruelling, rumoured-to-be-drink-and-drug-fuelled Europe/USA/NZ/Australia tour. There is no doubt the band was literally fried.

Bands such as Fleetwood Mac helped set the bar for outrageous band partying back in the day, when all the musicians were known for huddling together to share a ceremonial bump of cocaine before hitting the stage. The ladies wore diamond and jewel encrusted coke vials around their necks. At a party that went for 48 hours straight to celebrate kicking off their Rumours World Tour and the news that the album had just gone platinum, Stevie Nicks got so fucked up that she passed out wearing her contact lenses which wore off her cornea and almost blinded her. The tour manager had to piggy back her on to the stage and bandage her eyes during the days to save her sight. The amount of cocaine she snorted also burned a hole in her nose the size of a coin, which still didn’t stop her - she just had an assistant blow coke through a straw into her ass, which is now known as a Fleetwood Enema. Stevie has outlived her addictions since 1995, although she still likes to smoke a little pot when she’s songwriting. She told Vulture in 2019 “Sometimes I’m up on stage, and I’m going, ‘I can’t really believe you are actually up here, sober as a judge, having a great time.’” and recently said “I managed to save myself. I got through some pretty scary moments. But I saved me. Nobody else saved me. I survived me. I survived my cocaine. I survived it myself.”

Belinda Carlisle, lead singer of The Go-Gos liked to pregame for shows with cocaine and booze saying “I don’t think I ever went on stage completely sober for years and years… I just knew that it was only a matter of time before I died”. She kicked it all in 2005.

When ‘outlaw’ country singer Margo Price decided drinking no longer served her a few years back she described it as ‘the most rebellious thing I have ever done’. For weeks she faked that she was still drinking so her husband and bandmates wouldn’t notice and think she was weird.

Exploring psychedelics and embracing cannabis has provided what she needs to feel inspired, enlightened and rested and she talks about it openly at every opportunity. ‘I’ve figured out a version of not drinking that works for me. I’m not attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and I haven’t apologized to the people in my life. As women, we are always saying we are sorry. The only one I feel the need to beg forgiveness from is myself.’ Witnessing her firework energy and impressive fitness levels onstage can leave one awestruck.

Despite having penned such cracker odes to hard drinking like ‘Gotta Get Drunk’ and ‘Whiskey River’ (and still performing them) Willie Nelson is also a long time advocate for living California sober - the term coined to describe not drinking alcohol but enjoying marijuana and/or psychedelics - releasing a song of the same title on his 90th birthday with the bluegrass genre smashing young guitarist Billy Strings, who told the NY Times “I was raised on raging, partying, playing bluegrass until 3 a.m., but I am trying to create structure. That is hard because of what’s in my blood. I hate to even call this a career. It’s my life.”

He explains “One day we had this awesome gig. A lot of people showed up, and we sold a bunch of merch, and I thought we were fucking rock stars. I had been up all night and drinking beer and liquor and a bunch of shit. We got to the bar after and I was all, “Old Fashioneds! Get one for everybody, on me!” I was raring and tearing. But the next day, we barely made it to our gig, because I was puking every 10 minutes. We made it there in time to set up our stuff and play — we had to set up our gear in front of the audience. This was at a time where my career was really starting to take off, and I saw that as an opportunity to draw a line in the sand… I just came off four gigs back-to-back. We played Spokane, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; and then somewhere in Montana. And right now I’m on my way to Salt Lake City. I can’t do that if I’m drinking. It’s all I can do to take care of myself. There’s no time for that shit”.

The eminently quotable Tom Waits, who emerged onto the music scene as wisecracking, bar dwelling nighthawk with a bad liver and a broken heart, quit drinking way back in 1992, saying “Oh sure, it's inevitable, y'know? When you begin, it's a man takes a drink. When you end up, it's a drink takes a man. Keeping my balance during that period was tricky. When I was in my twenties, I thought I was invincible, made out of rubber. You skate along the straight razor and flirt with it all the time. I've been sober now for nine years; the best thing I ever did apart from getting married. Was it hard to quit? No, the hard part was before I quit. This is the easy part”. Even at the height of his barfly reputation in 1979 he told Sounds* ‘You know people always expect me to be a drunk, but I ain't no drunk, If I was a drunk I couldn't be an entertainer. 'cos being a drunk is a full time occupation.’ 

Even before that, in 1977, Tom Waits told Rolling Stone “It was starting to wear on me, all the touring. I'd been travelling quite a bit, living in hotels, eating bad food, drinking a lot - too much. There's a lifestyle that's there before you arrive and you're introduced to it. It's unavoidable.” 

When describing his former touring style Ed Sheeran says “I have a very addictive personality, I would stay up and drink all night. The buses would park underneath arenas and I’d sleep on the bus all day and then wake up and then come out, do the show, drink, get back on the bus. I didn’t see sunlight for like maybe like four months.”

Joan Jett, who has always toured constantly and has been a clean living, yoga practising vegetarian for over thirty years says her hard living was ‘pretty extreme…. focussing on the work was what helped me. You wanna have fun, you’re not ready to be done … its not easy’ . Her former band mate in The Runaways, Cherie Currie, says she ‘took it right to Death’s door’ before choosing to let go of alcohol and drugs. Former Runaways guitarist Lita Ford takes her kids and husband with her on the bus while doing huge tours with Def Leppard and Poison and says ‘now I’d rather do a good guitar solo than a good line of blow’.

Miley Cyrus, who has been mainly sober the past few years, and realised that touring really takes a toll on her mental health explains ‘what people really don't understand about touring, is the show is only 90 minutes, but that's your life. .. If you're performing at a certain level of intensity and excellence, there should be an equal amount of recovery and rest.’

Bruce Springsteen, known for his abundant onstage energy, exuberance and endurance - his shows regularly run to 3 hours - has kept up a daily exercise regime since he was in his twenties and endorses finding a way to sweat for an hour every day. He doesn’t mind a drink but he has never done drugs.

AC/DC’s Angus Young has been a teetotaller his entire life, preferring a chocolate milk and the buzz from an occasional cup of coffee to hard liquor. Kiss’s Gene Simmons has never drunk alcohol or done drugs because he didn’t want to put his mother, who was a Holocaust survivor, through any more pain. Kendrick Lamar came from a family of substance abusers and is an advocate for clean living, having never touched drugs or alcohol. Hardcore punk artist Henry Rollins was immune to the temptations of getting high, revealing ‘I just didn’t enjoy the effects. I found it all to be depressing. The more I saw drugs and alcohol do damage to young people around me, I concluded all drugs and alcohol were traps to marginalize those young people and neutralize the masses. Basically, it’s what The Man does to keep the people doped and docile. That alone is enough to keep me away from any and all of those poisons. As soon as you’re high, you’re prey to law enforcement. I will never give them that advantage.’

Though there are plenty of musicians who can enjoy a good party hearty without taking it to the danger zone, the old school extreme debauchery rockstar mythology is slowly disappearing. David Bowie stopped doing drugs and drinking in the 80s after a nasty bout of cocaine psychosis. Ringo Starr always performed drunk or high, until giving it all away in 1988. Looking back he said, “You always think you're witty on alcohol and cocaine. You think you're so witty that you decide to tell the same story over and over and over and over and over again. To the same person. I meet people now, and I think, 'God, was I like that?' And a little voice inside says, 'Yes, you were.’

You might not guess it to look at them, but the surviving wild men of the classic hard rock era have mostly all reassessed their substance and spirits consumption. Metallica leader James Hetfield says sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll is ‘a horrible statement. It is a myth. And to have those things attached to music, which is the best drug in the world, moves me like no other.’

Metallica are mindful of each other’s health and themselves, and look out for Hetfield, who reentered rehab after years of sobriety not too long ago. He says ‘…we keep the tour legs shorter now, because you get run down and your ego takes over. You start thinking ‘I’m so great. I can do anything.’

Once notorious party animal Alice Cooper, who describes touring as ‘we just go out there and kill the audience’ says it was the late 70s when “I woke up one morning and I threw up blood, and that's how I kind of knew it was over. My wife grabbed my ear and said, ‘Hey, the party’s over’.”

Motley Crue, the band that are known for taking excess to excess, are all clean living now. Drummer Tommy Lee, who claims to have drunk 2 gallons of vodka a day amid whatever drugs he could get his hands on, says that during what was meant to be Motley Crue’s last tour, he ‘literally did nothing and would just fucking drink… I didn’t notice it until towards the end of it, when I was like, ‘Oh dude, I’ve got to stop. This is fucking insane.’ Like, I was drinking just out of boredom’. He’s been sober for the past year (the rest of Motley Crue have been sober since the late 90s when the whole band decided to go to rehab at the end of a tour) and on a recent co-headline tour with Def Leppard - who also don’t drink anymore - he was using his touring energy to prank the other band members by photographing them with plant pots on their heads while they slept and collecting bonsai. Amazingly he recently underwent a full medical and got a clean bill of health.

Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry liked to get so destroyed on tour they were nicknamed The Toxic Twins. Perry kept a cocaine roadie side of stage and Tyler passed out onstage and had to be carried off numerous times. Perry and Tyler imploded, Perry left and the eventually rest of the band, who managed to keep their drug and alcohol consumption manageable, staged an intervention and forced Tyler to go to rehab while they went on vacation, which Tyler was furious about for years but grateful for now. He cancelled a bunch of tour dates in 2022 and checked himself back into rehab with the band’s full support - then completed their hugely successful Las Vegas residency.

Guns & Roses bassist Duff McKagan drank a bottle of vodka or up to ten (count ‘em!) bottles of wine a day until giving up the booze for good age 30 when his pancreas actually exploded, giving his other organs third degree burns. Slash has now been sober for 17 years.

Velvet Revolver, Slash’s other band featuring Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots, toured ‘dry’ in 2006, hiring a specialist tour manager who arranged twelve step meetings backstage and kept alcohol off the rider, but Weiland was found dead on his tour bus in 2015 after playing the Gramercy theatre in New York, with cocaine, MDMA and alcohol in his bloodstream. His beloved friend and guitarist had also recently died from an accidental overdose.

Even Keith Richards, the original poster boy for wild living, has changed his ways and abandoned his old habits, in search of ‘a different perspective’. He says “The cigarettes I gave up in 2019, I haven’t touched them since. I gave up heroin in 1978. I gave up cocaine in 2006. I still like a drink occasionally – because I’m not going to heaven any time soon – but apart from that, I’m trying to enjoy being straight. It’s a unique experience for me.” Mick Jagger’s long term dedication to his fitness regime and healthy living that began in his mid 30s, with occasional alcohol use here and there, means he is still out-dancing and out-rocking musicians less than half his 80 years. The Rolling Stones are a mostly sober band now - Ronnie revealed a while back that to wind down after a gig they will have soup and then go back to their respective hotel suites and watch crime documentaries on Netflix.

For me, touring is my dream travel destination. My dream job is an invitation to join Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour. I feel privileged to spend weeks preparing and then my entire day based around playing my songs to people. My mind and body vibrate to the tune of making music and I don’t care how difficult or boring the other parts of the day are. It just doesn’t matter to me. I’m happy to spend my days in service to songs. I love hanging out with other musicians and talking about nothing for hours after, especially with a glass of wine in my hand, though I sometimes wake up with minor regrets about that.

Phoebe Bridgers said on NPR during the pandemic ‘I can't wait to hate tour again’. She continued ‘Actually, I went on, like, a small press trip in New York in February and I was having that kind of, like, welling up, overwhelmed feeling where I was like, oh my, God, like, I'm asking for it again. I'm going to be miserable again. I'm so busy. And I'm - and I - like, I'm the queen of kind of leaving my dopp kit in a hotel room and not realizing it for three days and having my manager, like, ship it to the other - like, just having all your - it takes so much to be a human being in just day-to-day life. But on tour you're like, oh my God, did I... did I leave my wallet at the Love's truck stop? Or just it's like mental math every day. And now I'm finding myself really romanticizing that and missing it. So I'm trying to, like, be grateful for this time. But also, I miss tour so much… I would go on the worst tour on Earth right now if I could’.

If anyone has Bob’s number, could you put in a good word for me?

And since it ‘tis the damn season, may I humbly suggest that a Loose Connections gift subscription makes a lovely holiday gift that keeps on giving!

References:
| https://ultimateclassicrock.com/sober-rock-artists

Tom Waits: A Sobering Experience, "Sounds" magazine. Dave Lewis. August 4, 1979

"Smelling like a brewery, lookin' like a tramp". Rolling Stone: David McGee. January, 1977

"The drowsy chaperone - Short Takes". Kansas City Star. May 16, 2006. By Ward Triplett

https://www.gq.com/story/margo-price-on-sobriety

Everything Goes To Hell". Uncut 5th Anniversary Special. Take 61, June 2002 by Gavin Martin

https://time.com/6342806/person-of-the-year-2023-taylor-swift/?utm_source=roundup&utm_campaign=20230202

Page Six, 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/movies/joan-jett-bad-reputation-documentary.html

https://bravewords.com/news/henry-rollins-on-staying-clean-and-sober-if-i-write-a-book-i-want-to-be-able-to-put-my-name-on-it-not-my-name-along-with-and-heroin

http://metalassault.com/Interviews/2013/02/28/lita-ford-discusses-new-album-living-like-a-runaway-touring-more/