‘Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll’ is an adage that everyone’s familiar with. Among the mainstream, stories of Mötley Crüe’s drunken partying and Ozzy Osbourne peeing on the Alamo while hammered are just as well-known as either artist’s actual music. But, in recent years, the tides have started turning.
The 21st century has seen a host of heavy metal nobility turn their back on booze after decades of over-use. Metallica frontman James Hetfield’s admittance into rehab was one of the core events in 2004 documentary Some Kind Of Monster, almost 20 years after the press gave him and his bandmates the nickname ‘Alcoholica’. Slipknot’s Corey Taylor got clean in 2003 after a drunken near-death experience hanging from a balcony, and this March, Lamb Of God’s Randy Blythe released Just Beyond The Light: a memoir/self-help book that detailed his past struggles with substances.
