At the time I grew up, roller-skating was a very black kind of thing. There were some white kids there, but it was a real R & B thing. The rinks played R & B music predominately, although every now and then you’d hear The Archies or some pop song. But mainly it was Motown. I lived in south central L.A., and when we got to the skating rink this one day, we saw all of these people who looked very different from the people we hung out with. They were the precursors to hippies. They didn’t call themselves hippies; they called themselves freaks. My family were beatniks, and the freaks followed them. Then they became hippies. At least that’s how I remembered it. So when we went to The Teenage Fair and I saw all these freaks hanging out, we said, “Man, this is great.” We couldn’t understand how they saw through all that hair. I’ll never forget, we saw a bunch of them who said, “Oh wow, spade cats!” I didn’t know what that meant. So when Timothy Leary asked us if we wanted to take a trip, we said, “Yeah, where are we goin’?” We didn’t know that meant LSD. We went up to this house in the Hollywood Hills, and there was this guy that they were all calling a guru. That was the first time I heard that word. Just think about this … we were kids, maybe thirteen years old. I’ll never forget it.
We took LSD. I think it was on a sugar cube. I don’t recall the amount of time it took us to get high. We had already been smoking pot, so we thought we were high. We had no idea what was about to happen. They were playing this record I had never heard before, by The Doors. Over and over again. The song was “The End.” We had never heard anything like that before. We were used to “Don’t Mess with Bill” and “Going to a Go-Go.” After a while, after we achieved LSD highness, we found ourselves watching this television set that had no picture tube inside it. They had Christmas lights with angel hair, flashing off and on, off and on, off and off! There was a bunch of really gorgeous girls and guys hanging out in front of this TV set looking at these light flashes for hours and hours, while The Doors blasted in the background.
So that was my initial experience in that type of drug taking. Before that we had really only sniffed glue and taken amyl nitrate. We’d go to the model shop and buy a bunch of glue. We were connoisseurs. You can only snort Testers, in the orange-and-white tube. I should’ve known I was in trouble ’cause I was a glue connoisseur at ten!
See, I tried to be different from my parents who drank, smoked pot, and did heroin. So after I dropped acid, it was like, “Whoa!” I knew my parents never did this. I felt superior to them on some level: “I’m doing stuff that they couldn’t even fathom.” My mom wouldn’t take acid in a million years ’cause she’s a control freak. So after we took acid, psychedelics became my drug of choice. I only wanted to do acid, smoke pot, and do magic mushrooms. You won’t believe this, but for a very long time, my drug of choice was rat poison. Rat poison had belladonna in it. We were smart kids. Smart enough to know that belladonna was a psychedelic. We would separate the little granules of belladonna from the rat poison. We didn’t know if we could really tell which were the belladonna granules. Imagine, we were taking something that could kill you, and we were taking it to get high.
We knew all the hippie stuff—the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. Remember the thing about if you scraped the inside of a banana peel that would get you high? Going to the plant nursery for morning glory seeds? All that hippie stuff about how to get high.
I remember reading a book by William Burroughs called The Yage Letters. It was about the most powerful hallucinogenic. It grew on a vine in South America. Burroughs went down there and did it with the Indians. It was more powerful than LSD or STP. It was unbelievable. And all we wanted to do was go to the jungles of Brazil and do yage with the Indians. That shows you how completely sold I was on this life-style. It came as a complete surprise to me, but at the end of the day, I ended up becoming just your garden-variety alcoholic, because I had such a flair for getting high when I was younger. It should have been very exotic, but what brought me to my knees was just vodka and cocaine.
I could have started just like my parents right away. Cut to the chase. Stopped all the bullshit. “Hey, Mom, give me some vodka. Pass me some of that coke you guys are selling, and I can be there with you right now.” I had no idea that’s how I would wind up.
So after living like that as a teenager, I started to develop my musical skills. My mom, dad, and stepfather loved great music, and it was always playing in our house.
One thing I forgot to mention: Part of the normal school curriculum in those days had art class, gym, and music class; all these interesting things you could learn. Every school had those. For some reason I gravitated towards music. Every school I went to had bands and orchestras, or some reasonable facsimile. So because I always checked in late, I was assigned whatever instrument was left or lacking in the orchestra. A by-product of that existence was that, by the time I was eleven years old, I could sort of play or get something discernable out of every instrument in the symphony orchestra. I knew how the instrument worked, so to speak. Its function in an orchestra. By the time I became sixteen or seventeen years old—and I’ve now chosen my instrument, which is guitar, which was not part of the symphony orchestra—I had all of this inadvertent training in the elementary and junior high school. I knew how all that stuff worked. So when I became a professional musician, I magically knew what to do.
“No, no, no, French horns don’t play that part! You don’t want to give an excessive amount of fourths to these instruments because they can’t play them quickly enough.” I just sort of had it down.
When I was in my sophomore year of high school, I really started studying guitar, and I sort of perfected it by my senior year. At that time the world was very political, and my life was incredibly political. I was really hard-core into the anti-war movement and every kind of liberation struggle. Women’s lib, gay rights, bring home the troops. I joined every organization from the Hari-Krishnas to the Black Panthers. Every trendy little thing. By the time I was sixteen, I could hang with anybody from any religion, all that stuff. My knowledge of music and drugs, which went along with this alternative culture, was very extensive. And in my political background, I started out getting beaten up all the time and wound up a Black Panther. So I ran the gamut of every religion, every movement, every alternative cool thing.
When I turned eighteen, I decided that I was not going to drink or use drugs. Live a completely drug-free life, because I wanted to concentrate on the things that were important, which was saving the world and becoming a great musician. So for a long time, I would not drink or smoke pot or do any drugs. It was of no interest to me. I led this cool quest-for-knowledge life-style from the time I was eighteen until about twenty-three, which doesn’t sound like a long time now, but then it was an eternity. It was a fifth of my whole life. By twenty-three I was a pretty good musician, and things were happening to me. One thing I noticed though. When I became drug and alcohol free, I reverted back to my real personality, which was very shy and introverted and afraid of people. I wasn’t comfortable with people because I didn’t like the way I looked. Everything about my existence reinforced my belief that I wasn’t good enough. The fact that my mother never kept me more than a few months at a time, I felt that no one wanted me. But when I was high, everyone loved me. Everyone wanted me. I lived in communes. It was great.
So when I went on this quest to become a better musician and a better person, and I was drug and alcohol free, I reverted back to being afraid of people and very, very introverted.
Sometime during that period, I met my great music writing partner, Bernard Edwards, and we formed a band called Chic that changed my life and, if you read Rolling Stone, changed the life of many people: “One of the fifty moments that changed rock ’n’ roll.” In the mid-seventies we had our first hit. Dance, Dance, Dance, the first record we ever recorded under our name, was also a big hit. And from that moment on, we never looked back. The second record we recorded was also a big hit. And the third and the fourth and the fifth. We just had thi
s huge run of success. The interesting thing was that after our first hit, before there was video, you had to go on the road to support it. You actually had to go on the road and play live concerts. And I was fundamentally very shy, even though I had done all sorts of gigs before then. I was always in the band, off to the side. I wasn’t the star. But now I’ve got a hit record, and I’m the boss. I got to go carry a show.
The first show we did was in Atlantic City. A big disco called Casanova’s, and there were thousands of people. The very next day, we played for 75,000 people at Oakland Baseball Stadium, and I walked out and saw that sea of people and I was petrified. I panicked. I couldn’t go out on stage. And my roadie came over to me and said, “Hey, boss man, try a swig of this.” He had a Styrofoam cup with Heineken’s in it, and I just sort of swigged it down almost like cough medicine. Heineken is definitely an acquired taste, if you haven’t had a beer in years, and I swigged it down. In one instant this warm glow sort of came down my body, tracing the path of the liquid. I turned around to 75,000 people, put my hands over my head, and screamed “OAKLAND!” And the crowd yelled, “CHIC!” And I went, “This is fantastic,” and I played the show. Afterwards I said to my roadie, “Before we do every show, can you always have one of those cups of Heineken ready?” And to show you how quickly the disease of alcoholism progresses, by the end of that tour, I went from starting out each show with one Heineken to having the entire drum riser covered in white Styrofoam cups. Thirty or forty cups worth of beer all the way around the riser, and because the alcohol dehydrates you—it’s liquid and water, you think you’re quenching your thirst. Drinkin’ and drinkin’, and the lights are hot. Liquid evaporating. You’re just getting drunk. At least for the day. But it’s also giving me confidence that I’m putting on a good show. I’m a natural. Playing big baseball stadiums like I belong out there. It was great.
I carried on like that for many years quite successfully. My shrink used to call it “falling forward through life.” That even though you’re falling, you’re spiraling down, you’re going forward. You’re functioning. You’re doing great. I was really doing great. Writing songs like “We Are Family,” “Freak Out,” and “Good Times.” Producing David Bowie, Madonna, Duran Duran, Steve Winwood, and Eric Clapton. Fantastic! I couldn’t do anything wrong. I can’t even mention all the people I’ve done. Hit after hit after hit. And it went great for a long time, but now I can clearly see where I crossed the line. I crossed the line on that first tour. I was young and could take it, but … ten years of this. I’m still glamorous. I can hang with it. But there’s a big difference. Now records are costing a million, two million a record. I’m doing more coke than you can imagine. Drinking more booze than a human being should be able to drink.
I suffered many, many attacks of acute alcohol poisoning, especially on long flights. I remember once I flew from Honolulu to Los Angeles, which isn’t really that long. At the end of the trip, the flight attendant came over to me and said, “Wow, you just set some kind of record!” I didn’t know what she was talking about. She said, “Well, whenever we get on the plane”—this was a 747—“we carry forty of each type of drink, and you drank every whiskey sour we had on this flight.” She said, “Well, you actually only drank thirty-seven, ’cause one other guy drank three. Thirty-seven whiskey sours in six hours!” I remember her words perfectly. “That’s got to be some kind of record.” And of course, when I got in the limo and went to my hotel, I felt very sick. I went to the hospital and was told I had acute alcohol poisoning. First time that had happened.
After that, I subsequently had two bouts of pancreatitis. The first time I had it, the doctor said, “You can never drink again.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because right now you should be dead. Pancreatitis is quite often fatal. You don’t usually survive this. You die. You don’t leave the hospital.” So I was like, “Wow, I don’t feel that bad.”
And I recuperated after a few days, and went back to drinking. He had told me, “Never drink again. Alcohol always attacks some organ. Usually the liver, but in your case, it went after your pancreas.” He explained to me that pancreatitis is just like cirrhosis of the liver. I didn’t get it. I kept drinking.
I had a second bout of pancreatitis maybe a couple of years later. The doctors were like, “Wow, you’re killing yourself. You’re killing your pancreatic tissue.” And I didn’t quite get it ’cause it didn’t sound that dangerous. Or I just wanted to keep going. Who knows? The second bout of pancreatitis didn’t make me stop drinking either. Then one night I came home from an after-hours club. It was probably ten or eleven the next morning. Maybe earlier than that. The handyman was putting out the garbage, so it was probably eight in the morning. This was in New York. I lived on the twentieth floor at the time, and I got in the elevator, and somehow I pushed thirteen. When the door opened, I passed out and fell into the thirteenth-floor hallway, and a janitor happened to be there. He called 911, and the ambulance came and revived me.
It was a typical alcoholic incident. You pass out, you throw up, you choke on your own vomit, your heart stops, and there you go. I had done coke and whatever else, and that’s what happened. Nothing glamorous, just a typical alcoholic death. They were able to revive me. Because of the amount of coke in my system, though, my heart kept stopping. Finally, after they tried to revive me the seventh or eighth time, they gave up. The doctor was filling out the death certificate, and my heart just started beating again. As quickly as it stopped, it started going again. And I only know this because the doctor told me. I certainly wasn’t conscious of it; I was really lit. Anyway, the doctor was on staff, and he stayed around the next day until I came to, and explained to me how hard they worked to save my life, and maybe I was the kind of person who cared about other people. If I knew how hard they worked, I might have enough respect for their effort to go on living, because they saved my life. If I can’t do it for me, I could do it for them.
And I went, “Man, is this guy laying a guilt trip on me.” But you know, I thought it was really incredible for him to say that. Of course, I didn’t listen to him. In fact, I don’t think I waited even five days before I went back to drinking. I couldn’t drink right away because I felt so bad. My chest was killing me because of everything they had to do to get my heart going. They had brought me back from the dead, and I didn’t care.
I kept going for some time until ten years ago. I was down in Miami Beach at Madonna’s birthday party, and I was living the life. I had a gorgeous Hollywood movie star as my date. I picked her up in some stupid grandiose car I rented. She was down there doing a movie, and I had just finished doing the music for a big film that she was in, and somehow our paths crossed. Wow, I get to date these gorgeous girls! All my life I thought I was ugly, and now I’m dating movie stars. This is fantastic. And she likes me. She said, “Nile, you’re the greatest guy!”
Funny, but that was the last time I ever saw this woman. She couldn’t even make it through the date. I just went nuts. I was there with a bunch of very famous people who were all my buddies. We were all in the bathroom doing as much coke as we could. I was the last person to leave Madonna’s house the next day. I had to be carried home by friends. They deposited me in my hotel room in Miami. It was the first and last time I ever suffered from cocaine psychosis.
I got to my hotel room, the phone rang, and I answered it. It was a Mafia hit man telling me I only had a little while to live. He hoped that the last time I was up in New York partying with his girlfriend that I had a good time because I was going to pay for that good time with my life. I called some heavyweight detectives in New York to come down and protect me. Another grandiose gesture! A private jet. The whole bit. These detectives had to take this threat as real. They didn’t know that I was just imagining this shit. So they’re trying to find out who this “killer” is. In the meantime, I hid in the closet of my hotel room with a gun and a samurai sword waiting for this hit man to come and get me.
I had this wise-guy friend who took
this threat very seriously. He started calling around town to try and figure out who put this contract out on me. Probably about an hour or two later, he called me on the phone—and I’ll never forget this—he said to me, “Hey Nile, I got to ask you a question. Are you doing coke?” I said, “Yeah, but what’s that got to do with anything?” He said to me, “You fucking moron, the coke is talking to you!”
I never heard the phrase before. I mean, I’ve been doing drugs all my life, and no one said that to me: “The coke is talking to you.” Sounded like Greek or hieroglyphics. What is this guy saying? And then I reached out to a number of my friends who loved and cared about me, and they all said the same thing: “Hey Nile, don’t worry. That’s just the coke talking to you.”
What did they mean? Finally, one of these tough guys said to me, “Nile, there’s no fucking contract out on you. But I’m going to tell you something. If you don’t stop doing that coke, I’m going to come down there and kill you.” I knew he wasn’t playing, and I took his shit seriously.
For some reason I couldn’t hear all of my friends that were trying to help me, but this guy I could hear. For some reason, his words resonated. I still didn’t understand cocaine psychosis, but I did understand “Motherfucker, I’ll come down there and kill you if you don’t stop doing coke.” So I somehow, reluctantly, threw two half-ounces of coke down the toilet, and I sat there trying to sober up.
In those days, I believed the thing that made a person an alcoholic was brown liquor. You couldn’t be an alcoholic if you drank vodka or champagne or gin—although gin was pretty hard-core for me, I didn’t like gin. Even though I drank like a fish and almost died and all that stuff, I still didn’t think of myself as an alcoholic. And then two things happened to me in that hotel room, by myself. One, my friend said he was going to come out and kill me, so I threw the coke away. And two, I realized I had finished all the white liquor, all the clear liquor, and had to now drink something brown. I opened the liquor cabinet and saw that the only thing left was Scotch. I’ll never forget it ’cause it was the only time I did it in my life. I said, “This tastes fantastic! What have I been missing all these years?” And for some reason, that rang as if I had crossed the line. Now I’m an alcoholic. I can drink brown liquor straight and it tastes great to me. It tasted wonderful. I said to myself, “Damn, all these years I could have been doing this?”
The Harder They Fall Page 33
