Ray Charles: The Heroine Years. Starring Felicity Huffman as a transgendered blind superhero in an Oscar-breakout performance!
Are they planning on making that film before or after Ray II: The Zombi Years?
I would star Whitney Houston
Lst night…eh, this morning sometime, Comcast showed the 2005 Isle of Wight festival. If Babyshambles is any indication, the answer to the Op is: They don’t. Not well anyway.
Human beings are a wide and varied bunch. There are those people that can handle things with no apparent ill-effect that would kill most people.
There are a certain percentage of musicians that have somehow been able to be successful while at the same time maintaining some sort of addiction that would kill most of us. However, I would contend that most musicians that are hardcore addicts do not “keep playing”. I’d imagine most musicians who get into drugs early in life simply die young.
That was Glen Buxton and he died on Oct 19 '97. Although he’d come quite a way, the damage was already done. His health had never been good, even before the excess.
You can take most of B$B with a large grain of salt, but yeah, GB was not in the best of shape at that time. I have read other people quoted as saying that Glen could and did still play though. A lot of what was described in that book was played up and put on for the benefit of the author, Bob Greene. Keep in mind that the band was just a bunch of young and usually drunk guys who liked to have a little fun at the expense of the “earnest young writer.” 
Hey, NoCoolUserName, you might want to have a look for that book, especially if it’s hardback. I know people who’d kill for a copy! (Yep, got mine! )
I try to make it a point not to discuss what would normally be considered private stuff on the internet - I am old enough to not be comfortable posting anonymously and considering that sufficient masked.
But I do want to comment on this. I agree with the other posters who discuss the discipline of learning music - by practicing enough, it becomes rote and automatic. It is like learning lines in a play as an actor - the goal is to have them so burned it, that you can forget about working to remember them and focus instead on interpreting them, if that makes sense.
I will also say that there is some truth to the whole “if you practice drunk, you’ll remember it drunk” - I can only say that there have been a few occasions where I learned something while drinking and had much more difficulty remembering how to play it when sober that should have been.
But for me, two things that has NOT been mentioned so far are: adrenaline and the groove:
Adrenaline: there was an earlier post mentioning that you can be nervous/stressed when getting ready to perform and alcohol can take the edge off. Sure, I suppose that’s true. But when you are in the middle of performing and the joint is pumpin’ and you have people jumping up and down and screaming along and girls flirting with you while they’re dancing, etc., and someone shoves a shot in your hand between songs, you just down it and are so charged that it barely registers. Back in my day, I have had MANY shots during a gig and felt quite coherent and hit my solos solidly and was still the field general calling out song changes to the rest of the band and the minute we were done, just been completely rubber-legged. If that can happen on the modest scale I deal with, I can only imagine what it must be like to be a rockstar…
The Groove: the lock, finding the rhythm - whatever. When you are locked in with the rest of the band, that is the definition of “synergy” - it just takes on a life of its own and you get to sorta step outside of it and watch it as a chugs along. It is like a runner’s high or being in “the zone” - one of the biggest sources of joy in playing in a band. And when it happens, it is very easy to just stay locked - you lean on it, if you will, even if you are blitzed. Finding that lock on stage during times when I was a bit too far gone saved my bacon…
My $.02
I was in a band when I was in high school. The drummer and I were the only two non-dopers. We fired at least 8 people for showing up high for rehearsals, even though we spread the word that we were looking for non-users. I got great fun out of recording the stoned assholes attempts at playing, and then letting them listen to it later. Their comments, to a man, went something like:
Player: That sucks. That guy is a loser.
Me (or Steve): That’s you.
Player: No way.
Me (or Steve): Yep. That’s you trying to play while you were stoned at rehearsal yesterday. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Our band never went anywhere because everyone that auditioned was wasted. And oh, they sucked so bad. I can’t help but think how much better the music world would be if only the dumbshits would get off the drugs.
I didn’t realize it was a scientific theory. It was always just my motto:
If you are gonna play drunk, you gotta practice drunk.
I never used it in reference to playing music, just life in general.
They called him “No-Show Jones” for a reason.
Sorry to intrude but silenus could you meet me here? Thanks. Carry on.
Not just Brian Wilson, but also other members of the Beach Boys.