I suspect there’s a lot of exaggeration about how hard many groups party. Remember how Wilt Chamberlain claimed he’d slept with 20,000 women? Probably not impossible, but definitely implausable. Similarly, every band wants to be known as fun-loving & hard-partying.
Anecdote ahead: Perhaps I should not share this story, but back in my college years, senior year, we had a final concert in a dorm, during the big pre-finals/graduation party weekend at my university. We did this jam band-y kind of thing that was popular during that time (mid late 90s.) Basically, by the end of the session, I, along with a couple of musicians, had consumed the better part of a handle (1.5L) of vodka. I played piano/keyboards and I don’t remember the end of the concert at all, but I remember bits and pieces of the afterparty, so I was blackout drunk.
The next day or a couple days late, I was with the guitarist who had a cassette (showing my age here again) of the show. There were a couple improvised songs we had never played before, just made up on the spot, that I have absolutely no recollection of playing. It was weird hearing music I was playing, competently somehow, that I had never played before or since–like listening to another band playing and then realizing that it was you playing the key parts, mouthing out chord changes, and creating a melody on the fly. Surreal. So the ability does exist to get rip-roaring, even black-out drunk and still maintain musicality and creativity. It wasn’t just me, but the rest of the band who had been consuming, too. Only on the very last song, which apparently was a cover of the Doogie Howser MD theme, did things begin to fall apart, but there’s a swath of about 20 minutes beforehand that I have no memory whatsoever of (not even fleeting snapshots) where we all held it together.
Well you’re probably lucky, and God bless you. But maybe that’s the reason this is a question for you. Your insight is going to be limited in that way, in addition to not being a professional musician.
It’s no exaggeration that Stephen Stills once had a ball of coke/phlegm in his throat on an airplane that would have killed him had he not had someone intervene. And that as soon as his life was saved he started doing more immediately.
Or that they had to edit out of The Last Waltz a big piece of Coke that was in Neil Youngs nose during “helpless”
Sometimes they burn out on stage. The last Jimi Hendrix concert I saw was his disastrous performance with Band of Gypsies at Madison Square Garden in January 1970. He got halfway through the second number before sitting down on the floor and idly picking at at his guitar. Eventually he left the stage, and we were just told that Jimi wasn’t feeling well.
I had always assumed he was strung out on heroin, since he acted so lethargically when he sat down, but other reports said it was bad acid.
I believe there were a number of infamous concerts by the Doors that Jim Morrison was unable to get through.
I get up around seven
Get outta bed around nine
And I don’t worry about nothin’ no
Cause worryin’s a waste of my, time
The show usually starts around seven
We go on stage at nine
Get on the bus at eleven
Sippin’ a drink and feelin’ fine
-Mr. Brownstone, Guns & Roses
Granted, it’s just a song (about using heroin), but it does support the theory that the partying is usually after the show ends, and most of the time before the show is spent sleeping off the effects of the previous night’s binge.
I used to hang with a bar band back in the day where the mandolin player and I would split a joint between sets. I’d go back to my table barely able to function, while she would then rip off some tunes that were just amazingly complex.
Muscle memory.
I read my share of rock bios and there is a bit of all the different observations folks have made already. Keith Richards discussed knocking between cocaine and heroin (both medical grade) and running a cycle of up a few days, down for a day, for years. And so many folks tried to keep up and failed.
Most musicians I know don’t have an issue playing while high. (I’d even say it improves some people.) It’s alcohol that can be more hit and miss.
I’ve been watching a lot of sports documentaries on Netflix, and in the last week heard stories about how pitcher Dock Ellis pitched while on acid (only once was he “trippin’ balls” during a game but it was a no-hitter. He says he only pitched sober once and he was awful) and how St. Louis basketball star Marvin Barnes was loaded every time he played.
I think some people just can do it.
My dad is amazing at pool when he’s drunk. I’ve never played pool with him sober but he doesn’t do much sober. I don’t know if he’s worse when he’s sober but he’s great when he’s drunk!
and if you are really hardcore you don’t just do one drug. You do uppers to pick up from the depressants and do depressants to come down or even off the uppers. Then play mix-and-match to keep it together for the show.
This book has a great section on André the Giant showing Cary Elwes his old haunts in NYC.
My friends toured with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and said that nobody should ever try to keep up with those guys, that anyone who survived in that band had built up an incredible level of tolerance.
Jazz Quintet Drummer, to Zoot Sims: “Hey, Zoot! How can you play so good, so drunk?”
Zoot Sims: “Easy! I practice drunk.”
I finally read Motley Crue’s group autobiography “The Dirt” a couple years ago. That was one of the saddest books I have ever read; it was really, really obvious to me that at least two of them (Vince and Nikki) were horribly abused as children. 
There’s a reason why “Club 27” exists. It really, truly is the life expectancy for someone who engages in long-term hardcore drug and alcohol use. I saw many cases of people who died at or around that age from substance abuse and/or its consequences when I worked at that big hospital.
Back in the early days of Van Halen, they played in my city, and while I didn’t go to that show, my HS classmates who did all talked about how he stopped in the middle of “Jamie’s Cryin’” and proclaimed, “I forgot the $%^&ing words!” And then word got around that he did this at every show. 
:rolleyes:
Great stories, everyone! I am gaining some insight here. 
I think there are certainly some functioning alcoholics who would be worse at many things when sober, at least until they had been sober for enough time to get used to living that way again. An alcoholic in withdrawal is not a pretty sight.
I have a friend that saw Johnny Winter perform once, this was probably at least 20 years ago, and said that Winter had to be led out on the stage and basically propped up behind the microphone.
There’s a grand tradition of taking drugs before taking the stage. Santana claims that at Woodstock his guitar neck turned into a snake at one point and Robby Krieger made it a habit to drop before playing. I really don’t know how they do it. Even slightly drunk I would fuck up on stage.
Obviously the answer is “The same way you get to Carnegie Hall: Practce, baby, practice.”
Ten or twelve years ago I did stage crew work for the Pittsburgh Blues Festival. I helped Mr Winter get to the stage and get him situated behind the microphone, but he was sober as a judge, just old and feeble for his age.
From his tour bus we slowly walked the eighty or so yards to the stage. I carried his folding chair and he sat down and took a few minute long breather every ten or twenty yards.
He was a cool guy.