LAMB OF GOD’s RANDY BLYTHE: I Was ‘Weeping Uncontrollably’ At My First Sober Show

On “The New Man” podcast with Tripp Lanier, LAMB OF GOD frontman Randy Blythe opened up about being 14 years sober.

When asked how he overcame the belief that highly creative people, including talented writers, need alcohol or drugs to come up with their best ideas or perform at their peak, Randy shared his thoughts (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “That’s a sort of cultural mythos, especially in rock bands, and even more so in a metal band. I believe that that mythos is sort of shifting, that paradigm is shifting, and the young kids don’t think it’s as cool to be f**ked up anymore like we did when we were kids. It was part of the deal. And it’s a lie, it’s definitely a lie that you need all that stuff to do what I do. But it’s a cultural sort of mythos that I bought in to, not just with music, but with writing, because like any other angst-riddled 20-something male American dude, I loved reading Hemingway, I loved reading Bukowski, I loved reading Hunter S. Thompson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, all these members of this supremely male canon of authors who really reshaped modern English literature. And all of them had a few things in common — all of them were wild, did wild manly s**t, which I’m for. All of them drank to excess and generally got into some sticky situations from time to time.

“It’s a cornerstone of your identity, it becomes so,” he continued. “So for me, in my twenties and thirties, I would talk about being a writer a lot and I was doing all the things that all those writers, Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson and Bukowski, all those guys did — I did a lot of drinking, I did a respectable amount of womanizing, I did some fist fighting here and there, I got into some crazy s**t, I was practicing, I was doing all the things the great writers did except for the writing part. That’s the hart part. So that’s that cultural mythos with the writers. And then with music, and being in a heavy metal band, and the sort of cultural perception of that, that baggage, and me personally knowing some of the legends from this who did drink and drug to excess, I bought in to that. And in a sense in the beginning, alcohol was useful, and every now and then some drugs were useful.”

When asked to clarify what he means by saying that alcohol and drugs were “useful,” Randy explained: “Well, if you have a sense of stage fright, a liquid courage, a little bottled confidence [would always help in the early days]. And we were very confrontational band, so our earlier gigs were at house parties, squats and things like that. They weren’t even in clubs, and you’re on the floor with people, and [they were] very physical. The crowd can either aggressively not like you or aggressively really like you — either way.

“There’s no school to teach you how to be a frontman, how to get in front of people and do your thing. You’re not, like, ‘Okay, I’m relying on my training,’ like a Navy seal, like falling back on to the level of your training. It’s, like, ‘Okay, let’s go out and see what f**king happens.’ And so that can give you the nerves. And in the early days you, I could quiet those nerves with some alcohol. Most certainly. They don’t call it liquid courage for nothing. After a while, that inhibits your ability to do your job. Luckily, in my case, I wasn’t doing Al Green. I’m not Pavarotti. So if Pavarotti or Marvin Gaye got up there all f**ked up, people would be, like, ‘Oh my God, this sucks.’ When you’re in a heavy metal band, there’s an element of danger to it, which I think is valuable in music, at least in what we do. And there was definitely an element of danger to what we did. And alcohol was part of that. The thing is, though, man, you don’t need that. That’s a lie.”

When discussing how he made that change, Randy said: “I had to get beat on the head repeatedly that I was going to die if I didn’t stop drinking. I can tell you about my first sober show if you want [to hear it]. We were in Australia, and we were on tour with a band called METALLICA. And we had been out with them for about a year over the course of two, two and a half years. We’d done Europe, United States a few times, and we ended this tour in New Zealand and Australia. And my last night of drinking was in Brisbane, Australia. And I went out with some friends and just got completely, utterly f**ked up, except for that it didn’t work. I drank enough and I’m sure had I been given a breathalyzer, they would have been, like, ‘Jesus Christ, how is this dude still alive? There’s almost no blood left in his alcohol system.’ … And the alcohol, for me, was a thing that shut off the voices in my head, the voices that were angry at the way the world was behaving, that were angry at myself for my own shortcomings and a**hole-ish behavior or moral cowardice at times — whatever. The inner critic was incredibly harsh — and still is sometimes.

“But I’m trying to ameliorate that from time to time. But anyway, I went out and it stopped working. And I woke up in Brisbane on a hotel balcony. And I looked out on the street below… And one of my favorite bookstores in the world was directly across the street from the hotel. And then down the streets more were great restaurants, plenty of food. And then over to the left was the Brisbane Botanical Gardens, which are cool. And they’ve got all sorts of beautiful, weird plants we don’t have. And of course it’s Australia, so you’re gonna see weird-a*s animals and birds. It’s just a gorgeous place. And so I looked out from my hotel balcony. And I had a suite. It was very nice. We’re in Australia. I’ve got money in the bank. I’m on tour with f**king METALLICA. It’s the biggest heavy metal band in history, not to mention one of the biggest bands in the world, period. I’ve got money in the bank account. My band, I’ve learned somehow to function well enough, drunk, that I can still do my job. I still had a romantic partner at that time, a long term romantic partner that ended eventually, but at that time I still had her. And everything on the outside was good. And I looked out over this street and all this cool s**t and I realized I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to exist. It wasn’t like I felt suicidal, like ‘I wanna kill myself’, but I was, like, ‘I don’t wanna be here anymore. I just want to vanish from existence.’ And I looked over at this table where I had set the beer bottles from the night before ’cause I’d been drinking for a few days and I’m kind of a weirdo OCD dude with my surroundings. So I had very carefully, even while intoxicated, lined these beer bottles perfectly up in this — you know how bowling pins would be, like they’re just perfectly lined up, touching each other. All the labels are facing the right way. ‘Cause I’m trying to, by controlling my external environment, exert some sort of control on the disaster that is Randy. So I looked over at these beer bottles that were empty and they were stacked there and I realized that they were a metaphor for my life. Because on the outside, just like my life, everything was perfect and orderly and in its place. But, just like those bottles, I had just become an empty receptacle for alcohol and drugs. And all it would take would just be a little push, and those bottles would just fall and shatter. So I looked. I was, like, ‘F**k. I don’t wanna exist. I’m just an empty beer bottle now.

“And I thought, ‘Man, maybe I ought to really try and quit drinking, honestly, this time,’ because I’d been trying half-a**ed for, like, four or five years. And this time I took it serious. And I was, like, ‘Hey, I have to quit drinking.’ And so I asked the universe, I was, like, ‘God, please help me.’ Whatever’s out there. I had this moment where it wasn’t, like… I didn’t have a picture of a bearded dude in the sky or anything, but I just asked — I use the term ‘God’ for lack of a better term. I asked, ‘Whatever is out there, please help me because I don’t know what to do.’ I knew then, like, ‘Let’s stop and try drinking,’ and a peace washed over me, like immense calm in that moment. When I was just, like, ‘I’m f**ked,’ ’cause that’s the only way, if you have a problem, you’re ever gonna get better, is if you realize that you’re f**ked. It was a realization of reality, to put it simply recognizing that I was indeed totally f**ked. So I had this brief moment of immense peace wash over me, and it lasted for approximately 45 seconds. And then this little devil on my shoulder, like little Satan, he’s always there or whatever, the demon, it was, like, ‘Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Let’s think this through. Maybe you just had a bad night. Maybe you’ve just had a bad 22 years of solid drinking and drugging. It was crazy. It was crazy. I totally didn’t wanna live anymore. And it wasn’t the first time I’d felt that way. And I’d had these repercussions for drinking… You feel like you can’t function. And I felt that. And I was, like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. A second ago you were all good, and then before that you wanted to die and now you wanna drink again. You’re crazy. You are crazy, bro.’

“Some of the guys in METALLICA‘s band and crew were sober on that tour, and they had had words with me,” Blythe continued. “I’d been getting signals for f**king 15, 20 years from parents, family, kindly members of the Richmond Fraternal Order Of The Police, judges. I had a journalist in Richmond write a story about me, like, ‘This dude needs to sober up.’ I was, like, ‘F**k you. F**k you. You don’t know what I do. If you had to do what I did, you’d drink too.’ So I was, like, ‘I think what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna try not to drink.’ I made a decision, ’cause there was beer in the fridge right there in that hotel. I was, like, ‘I’m not gonna go get a beer. I’m not gonna go get a beer. I’m gonna go to tonight’s show and I’m gonna talk to these guys. I’m gonna be, like, ‘Will you f**king help me? What the f**k do I do?’ So I went to the gig, and I showed up early and I found a couple of those guys. I’m, like, ‘Look, I’m f**ked. Help me. I’m trying to be sober.’ And they were, like, ‘We got you, bro.’ And my hair was still long then. I walked on stage that night in front of 14,000 people, falling to pieces, weeping hysterically. Luckily, like I said, I had long hair, so I kept it in my face. And our music is, like, super aggressive, so I’m just crying… I think [the emotion at the time] was just, like, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. What is going on? What happened to my life? How did I reach this point?’ It’s like someone had scraped my entire skin, like road rash all over my soul. So I stood on stage in front 14,000 people screaming my head off while weeping uncontrollably. Luckily, no one could tell because I was just constantly running and headbanging. And I made it through that show. And that was my first day sober. And that was October 18th, 2010. I haven’t had a drink or a drug since.”