In reply to Barry.

There are exceptions of course, but as a general rule, it holds. I always felt like it had a lot to do with loosening the inhibitions, relaxing one’s self-doubt and tendency towards being too critical of one’s own work, etc. “Courting the muse,” they used to say way back into antiquity. Once I’d gotten serious about my career as a player and songwriter, I figured that was just a sly reference to getting bombed, myself.

Louis Armstrong’s fabled cocaine-soaked hankies; the characteristic beer bottle sitting beside the guitar amp; bands getting banned from venues for skipping out on their tab the last time they played there–heck, even a lifelong teetotaller like Dean Martin pretended to be drunk onstage.

It’s a very fine line to be walked here, this dynamic tension between too much and not enough—a line that requires balance, grace, and self-awareness to successfully tread. Not all of us have those qualities in sufficient measure, so they end up falling down—or, if they’re lucky, just wandering off into the woods until they realize they’ve lost their way and get themselves back on track again.

And all too many just keep at it until they literally drop dead: Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, Bon Scott, John Bonham, Keith Moon—the list is so damned long, Wiki had to break it down into deaths according to decade.

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