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Tag: sober musicians

  • Ty Dolla $ign Is Sober And Making Hits

    Ty Dolla $ign Is Sober And Making Hits

    For his newest album, being clear-headed made a big difference, Ty Dolla $ign said in a recent interview with SPIN. 

    Ty Dolla $ign may not be a household name, but the artist and producer is collaborating on some of the biggest hits in the music industry, working with everyone from Kanye to Christina Aguilera.

    Since working with Rihanna, Kanye West and Paul McCartney on the 2015 song “FourFiveSeconds,” Ty Dolla $ign has become one of the most well-respected producers in the industry, and he says it’s in part due to his newfound sobriety. 

    For his newest album, being clear-headed made a big difference, Ty Dolla $ign said in a recent interview with SPIN. 

    “I stopped smoking weed. That was cool, to just completely just clear my head and write songs,” he said. “Before I would just go straight in the booth and freestyle everything and sometimes on this one, I wrote shit on my phone or on a piece of paper, tried to map it out harder.” 

    Confidence Boost

    As he got sober, Ty grew in his confidence, helped by one well-known rapper. 

    “I had a meeting one time with Kanye and played him the album,” Ty said. “He was like, ‘Bro, nah. You need to do what you do. Add more bass, add more drums, add more … the real shit, that’s what no one else is doing.’ That conversation definitely inspired me and made me go back and go crazy with the live instruments.” 

    Eventually, he does want to be a household name. 

    “Every time you hear a record come on, you’re gonna know it’s me, automatic, just off of how it sounds. Just like what Timbaland’s done, Dr. Dre’s done, Metro Boomin. All the greatest.” 

    Other Sober Musicians

    Although the music industry is known for hard partying, many big-name musicians from Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler to Elton John have celebrated their sobriety. John recently celebrated 29 years sober. 

    He post an AA medallion on social media, saying, “29 years ago today, I was a broken man. I finally summoned up the courage to say 3 words that would change my life: ‘I need help.’ Thank you to all the selfless people who have helped me on my journey through sobriety. I am eternally grateful.”

    Even rapper Lil Xan, whose stage name is a riff on Xanax, has detailed his effort to get sober in part because of the overdose death of Mac Miller. In July, he detailed he relapse, but said he is still determined to get clean.

    “There’s no shame in relapsing it happens to anyone who goes through these issues,” he wrote. “I’ve been feeling like death from withdrawals but I know once I’m sober I’ll feel amazing.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • U2’s Adam Clayton Talks Alcoholism: You Lose Your Sense Of Yourself

    U2’s Adam Clayton Talks Alcoholism: You Lose Your Sense Of Yourself

    “I was kind of very unhappy, so I drank and I drugged and I got myself in tabloid newspapers,” Clayton said.

    Adam Clayton spoke frankly about the remarkable success he’s enjoyed as the bassist for U2, as well as how that time in the spotlight was complicated by his struggles with alcohol.

    Clayton’s comments came as part of his appearance on The Tommy Tiernan Show, a popular talk program on Ireland’s RTÉ One channel, and touched on how the band’s rise to fame impacted his own mental health and dependency issues.

    “You lose your sense of yourself,” said the 59-year-old musician. “I was kind of very unhappy, so I drank and I drugged and I got myself in tabloid newspapers.”

    Clayton added that while sobriety was hard fought, he’s glad to have made the choice to pursue it. “The alternative would have been a lot worse,” he noted.

    Tiernan, a popular actor, comedian and radio host in Ireland, has drawn praise from viewers and critics alike for his candid conversations with his guests, many of whom have discussed difficult personal issues during their appearances. Clayton’s conversation with Tiernan touched on a wide range of issues related to fame and dependency. In regard to the roots of addiction, Clayton said that he believed it to be a mix of family problems and childhood trauma.

    “Once you have that in your DNA, you don’t feel comfortable,” he said. “You feel restless, you feel questioning, you feel irritable and you don’t know what to believe. Once you have that programming, it’s really hard to undo it, and I think that’s what I went out into the world with.”

    After founding U2 as a teenager with Paul Hewson (Bono), David Evans (The Edge) and Larry Mullins, Jr., Clayton said that their rise to international acclaim within just a few short years left him unmoored. “Success went to my head,” he told Tiernan. “I think that if you get everything your heart desires by the time we were 20 – anyone I’ve ever met who’s experienced success and fame in that way in those years, it takes them a long time to recover from it. And that sounds like a complain, but that’s just what happens.”

    Clayton said that he dealt with the attention through alcohol and drugs, which earned headlines in Ireland and abroad. “I embarrassed kind of everyone I knew, and myself,” he said.

    But an experience in Australia during the Zoo TV tour in 1993 brought the impact of his actions into sharp focus for Clayton. After consuming two glasses of wine, Clayton said that he lost a period of three days, during which he missed a crucial day of recording with the band at a stadium appearance. “I had let the guys down, the three guys who had stood by me since the age of 16 and 17,” he recalled. “It was not a great place to be, and if ever there was a moment of realization, where you wake up and go, ‘I have a problem and it’s bigger than me, and I need some help,’ that was it.”

    Clayton said that gaining sobriety was a challenge – “It was a struggle, but I’m really glad I had the struggle” – and staying sober has its own set of difficulties. “I still have to really work quite hard at keeping my sanity on and off the road,” he said. “Drinking can take me to bad places. My thinking is not always reliable. And it’s great having three other guys who can check you sometimes, and we check each other.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Steven Tyler, Jason Isbell & Other Sober Musicians Share Their Stories

    Steven Tyler, Jason Isbell & Other Sober Musicians Share Their Stories

    A group of famous sober musicians discussed their past addictions and getting sober for a new GQ profile.

    Famous musicians aren’t known for being a sober bunch, and yet many successful musicians are in recovery. Recently a group of sober musicians spoke with GQ about how they are surviving and thriving in recovery.

    Joe Walsh, 71, guitarist for The Eagles, said that even after decades of Alcoholics Anonymous he still lives day by day.  

    “I have 25 years of sobriety,” he said. “But the important thing is, I haven’t had a drink today.”

    Aerosmith’s frontman Steven Tyler, 70, said that his experience with drugs started with marijuana. 

    “I grew up in the woods listening to the wind. It was just the silence and Mother Nature, no one around—it was an awful lot of magic there,” he said. When I started smoking weed, in ’65, ’66, it kind of enhanced those magic feelings.”

    Walsh said he turned to drugs to help him ease symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder and Asperger’s. The relief was instant, he said.

    “I felt like Superman onstage, and I played that way. I thought cocaine and alcohol was the combination, and it was just a kid trying to feel better. And I chased that initial solution to my problems for 30 years or so,” he said. 

    Tyler said that living the rockstar lifestyle made drugs feel like a natural part of life. 

    “You have a shot of Jack Daniel’s and you play Madison Square Garden and you get offstage and you go clubbing with Jimmy Page—come on,” he said. “After two encores in Madison Square Garden, you don’t go and play shuffleboard. Or Yahtzee, you know? You go and rock the fuck out. You’ve done something that you never thought you could, and you actually think that you are a super-being.”

    Over time, however, the drug use came to interfere with the art, Tyler said. 

    “It absolutely works for a while. But then things go wrong. You become addicted, it’s something you do all the time, and suddenly it starts influencing your greatness,” he said. 

    Still, Tyler was afraid that getting sober would affect his work. 

    “I thought I would lose my creativity,” he said. 

    Singer-songwriter Jason Isbell, 39, said that before he got sober he told himself he was afraid he would lose his art. However, he realized afterward that he was making excuses. 

    “Now I know what was really scaring me was just the thought of getting sober,” he said. “The addiction in your brain, that’s a tricky son of a bitch. It had me convinced for a long time that I wasn’t going to enjoy my life, that nobody was going to enjoy being around me if I wasn’t raising hell all the time.”

    View the original article at thefix.com