October 5th – Why do rock/pop stars so often turn
to drink in order to cope with the so-called stresses of stardom? I mean, it’s
not such a bad life is it? You get looked after, pampered, everybody says yes
to whatever is the question;
I want three hippos
riding on a sleigh pulled by eight polar bears to deliver my guitar on stage
tonight.
Yes, sir. What sex do
you want the hippos?”
or
I require a sixty-two-wheeled,
seventy-foot-long Range Rover driven by an orang-utan in full evening dress and
dark glasses with a forty-foot swimming pool in the back filled with ketchup
and toast with a dozen semi-naked transvestites draped round the edge of the
pool dressed in Speedos and lounging on deck chairs to deliver me to the gig
tonight.
Yes, Sir. Will that be
brown or white bread?
And you’re paid ridiculous amounts of cash to do exactly what
you want; in fact much like me these days…
But y’know, it never seems to be enough. There’s always
something to gripe about, it’s always too long between gigs, too short a time
between gigs, the tour bus only has 6-billion satellite channels to choose
from, the toaster is yellow, the Smarties are too small, too big, too few, wrong
colour, blah, blah, blah… One supposes that these leisurely-challenged
individuals had a predilection to booze before they became famous. I’d like to
think that the opportunity to drink weekly levels of alcohol (other than
offered by Carlsberg and so would
undermine their profit margins) was something our super-stars had been building
up to over their years of struggle as they elbowed and eye-poked their way up
the greasy pole of success. Would be very wrong if the pickling of various
organs was entirely due to them having been discovered playing in a basement
somewhere in Madrid
A 70’s band in the glam tradition, their rise to fame was of
the slow-burn variety and it was only after ten years slog on the circuits that
they finally achieved a level of popularity (notoriety) that led on to the making
of their seminal album, Sweet Fanny Adams.
Their flogging of the circuits did them one good turn as it would and did with
any band worth their salt; when they did finally make it they were as tight as
a tick on stage. Their live performances were the stuff of legend and everyone
who saw them had the distinct impression that the band knew their chops, as the
link below shows;
That’s a three piece band you’re listening to…recorded in
1973… They’d cracked the US and had created a dedicated and devoted following,
particularly in Europe and it would seem all was for the taking; however, the
glam rock/transvestite persona they fronted and which purported to house a high
level of narcissism (with bits of gay round the periphery) belied the level of
hedonistic aggression that the band, and in particular their vocalist, Brian
Connolly, indulged in off-stage.
What folk in the music industry (not all, but a large
majority) who eventually fall by the wayside will tell you when confronted with
the opportunity to tell their story is that the major problem is the amount of
down-time they have to go through. Now, I don’t want to pour yet more water
onto this sob-story…no, I’d rather pour petrol over it and set it alight… for down-time read time to relax and do something other than your day-job; you know,
what you and I refer to as leisure time, the time we have on the one day in the
week (Sunday…if we’re lucky) y’know, when we’re not working; that kind of
down-time. It’s those lengthy periods of down-time that are the hardest to cope
with, apparently, and that’s mainly because they’re not on stage
performing…apparently. And so they turn to booze to help them through these
difficult times…Well, in the case of Sweet
it seemed Mr Connolly went for the relaxing world record.
Born on this day in 1945, by the time he was 30 he had
developed a significant alcohol problem.
By the time he was 37 he was admitted to hospital with bloat
and a succession of heart attacks.
By the time he was 51 he was dead from chronic alcoholism.
But that’s not the saddest part. It was the reaction of his
band mates when they saw him at LAX in 1988 after a long break, when Sweet were trying to reform after one of
their periodic break-ups due to Mr. Connolly’s drinking habit (one of these
sessions had seen him give a drunken performance in Alabama which signalled his
final gig of that tour when he collapsed on stage leaving the band to continue
on without him, both the rest of the tour and that very night). At the airport
to meet up, someone asked where Brian was and was told he’s be along shortly.
The other band members where then treated to the arrival of some wizened old
man who walked with difficulty and was ghostly white and shaking. Andy Scott
said later, remembering the scene;
It was horrifying.
You know you’re plumbing the depths when your contribution to
a recording session for a forthcoming album is erased from the mix… As trailed
in these pages before, excess of booze and/or drugs will do for you not matter
who you might think you are.
No comments:
Post a Comment