During a conversation with Hard Drive Radio, PAPA ROACH frontman Jacoby Shaddix talked about mental health, touching on the deaths of Chris Cornell and THE PRODIGY‘s Keith Flint, as well as his own well-being.
“I was just gutted,” Jacoby said about hearing the news of Flint‘s passing, “I’m a huge Prodigy fan since I was, like, a 15-year-old kid jamming their music.”
After the interviewer brought up Chris Cornell and the second anniversary of his death, Shaddix commented (as transcribed by Ultimate-Guitar.com):”Music is very cathartic and it can also be very healing. I’ve found that over the years through my own experiences, through my own struggles.
“The music, at a point in time where I was not in a good place, it was the only thing that gave me peace and comfort from the war inside my mind in this darkness, and I truly understood it.
“Fans would come to us and say, ‘Man, this record saved my life,’ and I never really understood the gravity of it until I found myself in that darkness myself, in my own life.
“And it’s a trip when you pull through those places and really fight through it. You realize, like, ‘Thank god I didn’t take it and make a permanent decision to a temporary problem.’
“The thing is, what I do know about life is that part of life is supposed to be painful, we’re not supposed to get out without cuts and scrapes and bruises, it’s not supposed to be all happy, happy, joy, joy.
“Like, we got to have the pain to be able to understand, to be able to know what joy, happiness, and freedom is. I’ve found that maybe sometimes in my life, I thought that life was just supposed to be all happy, happy, joy, joy, and I was, like, ‘Why me?’.
“Now, the thing that I found is that when I’m going through some kind of struggle or strife or whatnot, it’s instead of, ‘Why?’, it’s, like, ‘Woah, what the f*ck am I supposed to learn right now?’.
“I always got a part in everything that’s going on, ‘What’s my part in it?’, and, ‘What can I learn?’. It’s a lot of self-reflection and at this point, I feel like I’m kind of rambling on my answer, but it’s, like, that’s where I’m at with that.”
