You hear all the time about rock stars partying with booze and drugs to the point of ODing and dying–sometimes with alcohol alone.
Now I play piano and sing, and if I’m on my second drink, I really can’t play any more. I guess some people can, but I don’t see how people could play actually trashed (and sometimes you hear of how they can’t–they are close to incapacitated on stage).
So, the need to actually perform seems one barrier to partying. Shows are often late at night, so partying would have to occur during the day or really quite late.
And then there is the issue of hangovers. I feel bad enough after not so many drinks, but the idea of having to schlep to the stage and perform hung over on booze or drugs sounds like a nightmare.
Or could it be that such party types are in the minority and for most musicians touring is pretty sedate? I don’t know, as I’ve never been on the road or know anyone behind the scenes.
Bonus question: How do musicians deal with feeling like shit? Not sick enough to call off the show but just stuff like diarrhea or whatever?
I imagine they develop a tolerance to it… They will also be playing the same songs very reguarly. I drink most days, and can handle it a lot better than someone who doesnt, someone who didnt know me very well probably couldn’t tell I had been drinking. Not a thing I am bragging about, but I imagine someone like Keith Richards, has some mighty tolerance.
I have no particular knowledge on this topic, but my assumption had always been that the order of events was:
Play show
Assemble groupies
Party
Not:
Assemble groupies
Party
Play show
So while they may well be partying hard basically every day, by the time it’s time to perform, they’d have had a night’s rest and the better part of a day to recuperate.
No doubt, but the Stones were quite young when they first got started. Brian Jones is a case in point of death via drugs. So they would have to get used to all the drugs and everything as they were going along.
Also, I can understand having a tolerance, but people still party up to the point where they are feeling it. He’s not a rocker, but I read about Spencer Tracy going through multiple fifths of whisky in a day. Yow.
Right, that was my thinking too. It just sounds very tiring. I can certainly understand it if they are doing it on a night when they don’t have a show the next day, etc.
I’ve hung out and helped set up the stage for many blues shows at a local venue. The alcohol use I’ve seen is pretty moderate. Cannabis is much preferred.
The one time I did the soundboard for a cowpunk band they pounded PBRs from the second setup started. It contributed to their sound.
Play show
Party
Travel to next show
Tired, so take a bump
Play Show
Party
Awake because of bump during travel
TIRED!
BUMP!
PLAY SHOW!
PARTY!
BUMP! TRAVBUMP!EL
PLAY BUMP!SHOW!
PAABUMP!AAAARRRTTTYYYY!!BUMP! etc
Natural selection and genetic predisposition. If they can’t handle the drugs they drop out of the business. Only those who can handle it remain. Syd Barrett from Pink Floyd immediately springs to mind.
Acquired desensitivity. Drink and take drugs all day, every day and you build up a tolerance. Plus, as noted up thread, the serious partying is done after gigs. But a chronic alcoholic can drink any ‘normal’ person under the table without even getting a buzz. Plus, again noted up thread, they play the same songs every day for years. They can play them on auto pilot using muscle memory.
Cheating. Some rockers exaggerate their drug use to impress people. While most bands can and will ‘fill out’ the live sound using tapes or hidden backing musicians. I think it was Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols who was typically sent on stage with a bass guitar not even connected. A really popular band get so much crowd noise they can barely be heard anyway.
Selective memory. The public only really remembers the outlandish stories of drug abuse. EVERYONE knows the story of Ozzy biting the head of a bat. How many spectacular anecdotes of sober professionalism get told endlessly?
Plus musicians do cancel gigs with illness and if you search the Internet there have been plenty of examples of musicians vomiting on stage or rushing off stage with diarrhoea attacks. Remember, in a band, the bass player can simply start a bass solo or the singer can start an extended shout and repeat with the crowd and other band members can have five or ten minutes to ‘recompose’ themselves.
I find my ability to play possibly increases a bit after a few drinks, I think perhaps because I relax a bit but a while later decreases. This is true of both instrument playing and of vocal work.
I have rarely performed shitfaced. Once in particular was one of the best shows I have* ever *performed and the audience was very responsive. Another couple of times the shows were mediocre and my performance was uneven, kept forgetting lines, and my voice was in bits.
For me, I play better with a drink or two in me right up to the point where I don’t. Therefore I always limited myself to a drink after set up & sound-check then one per set to keep it under control. One band I was in was a real party type band and this sometimes went out the window due to crowd buying us shots we pretty much had to take onstage. Fun, but I do think the music suffered sometimes.
For the touring pros, I honestly think (as mentioned above) it’s a combination of really not partying too much until after the show and generally being overblown as a way of bragging. It might be just me, but I don’t get the impression the modern bands go hog wild on tour nearly as much as they did in the 70s & 80s. Money is tighter and they can’t afford too many bad shows with the internet being what it is anymore.
Well, it is true that just about every concert goer has a story about watching an act where it’s clear that the lead singer was incapable of performing due to some kind of chemical impairment. So not all performers can get away with it all the time.
Yep, I’ve had one guitarist who I couldn’t tell if he was drunk unless he stopped playing, but he was almost always drinking around me. Fortunately, he’s a damn fine guitarist in either state.
As to the rest, you have to remember that most drugs that aren’t depressants don’t really affect your fine motor control. So, you wouldn’t necessarily notice it in the recording if they had picked up a cocaine habit…well, maybe if you listened to the lyrics, you’d notice.
First partying isn’t as big an impairment to music as it is to most straight jobs. I can definitely be too drunk to play well, but one drink may well improve my playing a bit, and I can certainly play better after a couple drinks than I can run a spreadsheet after a couple drinks.
Second, actual performing time, even on a tough touring schedule, is way less than forty hours a week, so there’s a lot more time for both partying and recovering (being hungover and/or semi-conscious on the bus might not be super-fun, but it won’t get you fired like being semi-conscious at the office). It’s also a lot easier when you’re sick to pull it together for a one-hour concert than it is to grind through an 8-hour office day (and there’s a lot more incentive to do the show compared to showing up for a normal office day).
Third, as noted, musicians don’t always party with no consequences – lots of shows have been way less than optimal due to drunk/hungover performers. The tired/hangover ones aren’t as obvious, of course. Or the ones where musicians are playing through a flu or something.
Fourth, there’s going to be a lot of both exaggeration of how what really happens, and a lot of only noticing the crazy ones, and not really commenting on the guys who have a single beer after the show and then play bridge in the hotel until bedtime.
A few of the live recordings from the '70s and '80s I’ve managed to “find” on the web have performers who may sound a bit sloppy on their instrument, but only hints at how inebriated/wasted they are. This becomes apparent once the get on the mic…Clapton and Johnny Winter immediately come to mind.