Conversations With Tom Petty by Paul Zollo

Author:Paul Zollo [ZOLLO, PAUL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85712-764-8
Publisher: Music Sales Limited
Published: 2012-12-27T05:00:00+00:00

howie chapter fourteen

Howie, as we know, sadly died of a heroin overdose on February 23, 2003, at the age of 47. Do you mind discussing his decline?

tp: Howie had always been the kind of lone ranger of the band. He was the loner. Not that he wasn’t close to us. He was. He had a distance. Ben was very close with Howie. He socialized a lot with Howie, went over to Howie’s house. I really didn’t go over there much. I only saw Howie when we worked. I didn’t see him much. I knew that heroin was around. I knew, as early as Southern Accents, I remember seeing heroin in the studio.

Did you try it?

I think we all probably tried it one night when Howie offered it to us. [Laughs] We all had a little bit, and that was it for us.

You didn’t like it?

I think we all liked it a lot. And we knew we could start liking it a whole lot, so we didn’t have any more of it.

You didn’t shoot up?

No. We just smoked some. I don’t think Howie was a shooter. I don’t think he liked needles. But I knew from seeing him bust that out that night that it was around. Heroin, not a good thing. But I don’t moralize, and I wasn’t the kind of person to tell someone how to live. Now I think I would, but then I wouldn’t tell somebody how to live. Now I think I would be very vocal about it. But that was his business, so if he could do his job, that was all I was interested in, and I wasn’t going to say anything.

So I didn’t know if he was addicted to heroin. But I knew that it showed up from time to time. Then as the years went by, I started to realize, as we all did, that Howie’s a heroin addict. And all of us in our way talked to him. And we said, ‘You’re gonna have to quit this. It’s gonna get you. You just don’t win with heroin. You die or you go to jail. There’s no middle ground. There’s no other options. There’s not one more choice. That’s it.’

He was always receptive, like junkies are. They always tell you they are gonna straighten up, and then junkies start to lie. And they really start to lie. They can’t help it. They have to constantly cover for their lives, so they become professional liars. And we loved Howie so much. But he was always the one who was two hours late for rehearsal. Like junkies are. They’re just late. And the dangerous thing about it is that he could play and sing.

So it didn’t affect his abilities to perform?

It didn’t affect his ability for a long time. Heroin can be like that with musicians; I think that’s why you see so many musicians drift that way, because you can remain musical for a long time. But I think, without exception, they all hit the wall eventually and the creativity goes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.