HARDCORE PUNK
STRAIGHT LIFE
HARDCORE PUNK UNDERGROUND
& SOME ROCKANDROLL AS WELL
After years of drug abuse he became a leader of turning people around from the problems of drug and alcohol excess. His speeches at AA meetings in Los Angeles were legendary.
Denver concert promoter Chuck Morris about Chuck E. Weiss, his friend of over 50 years after Weiss died in July 2021
I was never, never interested in drugs.
Tom Jones (over 80 and feeling great) in the January 2021 Record Collector interview
Cocaine, heroin,
I never use speed, I never put the needle in.
Bad sex, heavy debts,
It's too late to run when they come and snap your legs.
The Vibrators "Keep It Clean"
I'M TRYING TO STAY AWAY FROM CLUB DRUGS.
BOB MOULD in an interview for MOJO, February 2019
DON'T DRINK, DON'T SMOKE, WHAT DO YOU DO?
ADAM ANT
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COCAINE ALMOST KILLED ME.
IT'S BETTER TO JUST NOT DO IT.
STEVIE NICKS
in Q MAGAZINE ,
MAY 2017
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Q: ARE THERE ANY DRUGS YOU MISS?
A: OH, GOD, NO. I'VE HAD A WONDERFUL RELATIONSHIP WITH MY BODY LATE IN LIFE. EVEN THE THOUGHT OF SMOKING WEED GIVES ME THE CREEPS.
IGGY POP
interviewed in ROLLING STONE,
JANUARY 12-26, 2017
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I have stopped using drugs. I stopped drinking six weeks ago. I just want to work... This is going to be my year.
Marc Bolan (1947-1977) in February 1977
Captain Sensible (The Damned bassist) about the same time:
He'd cleaned his act up in a big way. He didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't take drugs. He kept jogging.
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"Really and truly, when people ask what I eat and drink to live so long, I say to them that I eat everything, except pork and chicken, and I don't drink rum and dem tings"
VIOLET BROWN answered a reporter, when asked about the reasons for her longevity. Brown was born in Jamaica in the 19th century when it was a part of the British Empire and she was the last known living former subject of Queen Victoria. She was a Jamaican supercentenarian who was the oldest verified living person in the world for five months, until her own death at the age of 117 years, 189 days on 15 September 2017.
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So what was your relationship like with the US punks, ‘cause you namecheck Richard Hell in a song…
Oh yeah, I just liked the name, I just thought it was funny, but I did meet him in America, you know, I thought they were all nice, they were nice to me… but I wasn’t really on that whole heroin vibe, that was more Chrissie and Debbie, more caught up in that, but they all detoxed, all clean now… I think Tessa got a bit involved with heroin, but she’s cleaned up through Tai Chi. A lot of people got through it if they didn’t die, Sid was one of the unfortunate ones. But luckily I never got into it. I saw very early on when I was a young teenager, I had a boyfriend, he was sixteen, that died of heroin, I don’t even think he knew what he was doing. I witnessed that at a very young age so I was very careful about drugs during X Ray Spex. I don’t think drugs are glamorous. Not really. I think there was a flirtation with it, just like with cocaine it’s sort of a rich person’s drug and therefore it’s ‘glamorous’, and heroin had a glamorous thing to it in the punk days, from America, because those bands were quite glamorous, but when you think about it, I just think it victimizes people, it makes artists made more vulnerable to be able to be worked without proper payment, just for their drugs. When you hear about it in modeling, it all goes hand in hand with a negative outcome I think.
So you managed to sidestep that with Spex…
Oh yeah, we were pretty clean, I think our boys might have drunk a little bit but that’s about it really.
POLY STYRENE
in conversation with Hugh Gulland
for VIVE LE ROCK ,
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After a long period of sobriety, Charles Henry Mosley III lost his life, on November 9th, 2017, due to the disease of addiction. We’re sharing the manner in which he passed, in the hopes that it might serve as a warning or wake up call or beacon to anyone else struggling to fight for sobriety.
Chuck Mosley's family
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'I've always maintained I'm the most radical rock 'n' roll singer Britain has ever seen.
'I was the only one who didn't spit or swear or sleep around. I didn't do drugs. I didn't get drunk. I didn't indulge in soulless sex. And I've always felt comfortable with the decisions I've taken. I like being Cliff Richard.'
Sir CLIFF RICHARD, (The Shadows & himself) in an interview with the TV Times
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I grew up in a place called Amherst, which was a Grateful Dead kind of town. I’d seen what drugs were doing to all these kids, so I was totally there with the straight edge thing already. I’d already tried drinking and doing drugs and found them kind of boring, so when I first heard Minor Threat and DOA I could really relate to what they were saying. Back then (1982), a lot of punk seemed to have this whole heroin thing going on, but they were making these songs that were saying the same things that I was thinking at the time. I’ve mostly been straight edge ever since. I mean, I don’t care what anybody else does and I’ve had little periods where I’ve drunk for a bit, but for the most part, I’ve stuck with it and never done anything.
J MASCIS talking to DOMINIC HALEY for LOUD AND QUIET AUGUST 2017
Immersed in the ‘80s Boston hardcore scene, Mascis naturally gravitated towards that type of music. His form of rebellion wasn’t doing drugs or drinking. He went the opposite way and was completely straight edge, but it’s nothing he pushes on people today.
“Oh, I don’t care what people do,” he says. “I came to that kind of conclusion on my own and to hear Minor Threat at the time, I could really relate to it more than junkie punk rockers. That was exactly how I was feeling at the time. I was sick of all the hippies and stuff.”
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"Originally we were musicians dabbling in drugs, and we became drug addicts dabbling in music."
Aerosmith's Steven Tyler
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I don't know, just Janis's death. That struck me. It was dark times. Everybody was doing so much drugs and I couldn’t even talk to the band. I was into yoga at the time. I’d given up drinking and I was into totally different area, health foods and getting back to the streets, working with the American Indians. It was getting strange for me. Cocaine was a big deal in those days and I wasn’t a cokie and I couldn’t talk with everybody who had an answer for every goddamn thing, rationalizing everything that happened. I thought it made the music really tight and constrictive and ruined it. So after Janis died, I thought, I’m not gonna go onstage and play that kind of music; I don’t like cocaine.
Marty Balin commenting on his leaving Jefferson Airplane in 1971
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'Cause it was late
And I was drunk
And I didn't see that little tree trunk
Didn't know nothin bout a hole in my head
'Till I woke up in a hospital bed
It was blood on the ground
There was beer on my breath
I've never come that close to death
Remember if you wanna drink and drive
It ain't worth the cost of an ambulance ride
Drunk drivin it happened to me
It could happen to you
Drunk drivin I'm guilty
And I'm gonna blame the booze
THOSE DARLINS (DUI OR DIE)
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MY GREATEST REGRET IS SPENDING SO MANY YEARS ON FUCKING DRUGS. I CAN'T EVEN REALLY FUCKING REMEMBER IT NOW.
SHAUN RYDER HAPPY MONDAYS, BLACK GRAPE
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"I had a horrendous, horrendous cocaine problem"
DAVE HLUBEK (1951-2017) MOLLY HATCHET founder, songwriter & guitarist
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