Hard to Handle by Steve Gorman

Author:Steve Gorman
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2019-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

Labor Day. I just had to get to Labor Day. Five weeks in Europe, four weeks on H.O.R.D.E., and then home. Done. Free.

Our two weeks at home flew by. I was back on a plane to London before I knew it. But, once in Europe, back in the festival groove, there were a lot of easy days. Playing in front of tens of thousands of fans always put us in better moods.

During that summer run, we had an inordinate amount of days off in Amsterdam. Chris always loved it there, of course, as he could openly smoke weed and hash all day and night. But in 1995, weed and hash were the least of our concerns.

Heroin had finally arrived in full force. Ed and Marc were snorting regularly, and now Chris jumped on board with them. They had dabbled here and there before, but it was becoming a more common fixture.

In July we did three nights at Wembley Stadium with The Stones. There were two dressing rooms for the band: one for me, Johnny, and Rich, and another for Chris, Marc, and Ed. There was a sign on their door that read: “Peking Duck.” That was their code word for heroin. “You have to order Peking Duck twenty-four hours in advance, same as this shit,” Chris explained backstage, all but bragging about their use of heroin.

They thought it was funny. And they thought it was cool. We were playing with The Stones, so they were doing heroin because Keith Richards did heroin in the ’70s? I guess that was their logic. You can’t really rationalize the behavior of those who dabble in heroin, especially the ones who flaunt it like little boys with a new bouncy ball.

But I can’t throw Ed under that bus, actually. With Ed you couldn’t tell whether he was fucked up or just weird old Ed. He was, at all times, under the influence of some combination of drugs and it rarely, if ever, was even noticeable. It certainly didn’t affect his playing. That dude was great no matter what.

With Chris and heroin, there was always more talk than action. People always assumed he was a full-blown junkie, and he did nothing to dissuade anyone from that line of thinking. He dabbled with heroin to be sure, and he talked it up as if it were a daily part of his life. But it was never a serious thing for him. Not so for Ed and Marc, unfortunately.

Unlike Ed, heroin most definitely affected Marc’s playing. A few years later, after Marc was fired from the band, Rich claimed Marc was so strung out that he would on occasion be playing a completely different song from the rest of the band. That was bullshit. But Marc struggled, and he missed notes, and he was a bit of a zombie. And because this was The Black Crowes, instead of being seen as a weakened and wobbly soul in need of support, he instead became a target for blame.

But back in the summer of 1995, we were all playing great.

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