Sober Rock Stars with Brenton on Tour

Tribe Sober - inspiring an alcohol-free life!

If you are as old as I am then you may remember when rock music was all about “sex, drugs and rocknroll”

I still remember going to a rolling stones concert in London which was held the day after their guitarist Brian Jones had been found dead in his swimming pool. 

As he was only 27 years old he joined the tragic line up of other talented artists who died at the age of 27 – including Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse and Janis Joplin.

But times are changing – the music business is a multi billion dollar business and everything that rock stars do remains on the internet for posterity.

My guest this week has a job that you may well envy if you are into rock music – he tours the world for a living – running concerts.  He’s also got a podcast called “Brenton on Tour”

In this episode

Brent didn’t have a hectic “rock bottom” but as his responsibilities grew he realised that he needed to be super sharp at all times during his tours. He manages huge budgets and a complex schedule.
He found himself planning his drinking – if he had three days off work then he knew that he would be drinking and he wouldn’t be at his best during some of that time
He began to feel that he needed to make a choice between drinking – or his career and family.
We agreed that even if alcohol doesn’t destroy us (and it certainly doesn’t destroy everybody) it often prevents us from reaching our potential. 
Brent believes that a lot of people think they are fine as they don’t have an obvious “problem” but in fact they would be a lot sharper and more energetic without it.
We talked about the fact that sometimes we have a perception that we have a boozy crowd of friends but when we stop we sometimes discover that we were the ringleader ;-)
Brent had Covid and was so pleased that he was not drinking when lockdown came around.
We agreed that Yes we do sometimes lose friends when we stop drinking but those drinking buddy relationships are often replaces with new and deeper friendships.
Brenton got sober with a combination of exercise, coffee, creating podcasts – and Clare Pooley!
I loved his story of connecting with Clare who was firmly on Team Brent – the journey she describes in her Sober Diaries mirrored Bretts experience – she stressed the importance of getting to 100 days and then of course he didn’t want to waste his sober days so he carried on
He even had a major wobble at several months in – then discovered that Clare had the same experience. Reading how she regretted giving in to the caving kept him on track.
That’s exactly the kind of thing that happens in our community – people reach out because they are tempted or because they feel miserable and someone who is further down the road will always say “when I was at that stage this is what I did” – connecting with people at different stages of the journey is invaluable.
We talked about Clare’s inspirational blog – the Obstacle course - and agreed that the worse thing is to fall on and off the wagon.
Brent has experienced many benefits during his 3 years of sobriety – mental clarity and more energy to name just two.
Saving time is a huge benefit – no longer are we planning the drinking, doing the drinking and recovering from the drinking.
The podcast interview we did took place in the morning on one of his days off – he said that normally he would be sleeping but instead he was up and ready to talk to me about sobriety! -  As he put it he was very happy to replace his search for alcohol with a search for knowledge 
That got me thinking that the combination of having extra time as well as more energy and creativity explains why many of our community have gone on to develop new interests and connections since they got sober.
We did agree that getting sober is like saying goodbye to your best friend and you heard him promise to write a “Goodbye to Alcohol” letter for our website.
With a job like his I obviously wasn’t going to let Brent off the hook without getting the inside scoop the drinking habits of todays rock stars
For a long time substance abuse was cool…but now not so much
Brent’s been in the music business for 20 years and these days it’s the “cleanest” it’s ever been.
Huge amounts of money are spent on travel, hotels and stadiums so the promoters expect their artists to be well behaved – and of course concert tickets are not cheap these days so the fans want value for their money.
A bad performance will live online for ever and can really damage a band’s reputation.
There are many sober rock stars these days and their image does not suffer when they ditch the booze. This is such a good trend and many young people may be inspired to follow the example.
So according to an article called “the sober rebranding of rock n roll” there are many sober rock stars – here are six: Jennifer Hudson, Elton John, Eminem, Keith Urban, Steven Tyler – and Neil Young.
If you have a listen to Tribe Sober podcast episode 68 you can hear the recovery story of punk musician Jon Turner who is in a band called the Petrol Bastards
I ended our conversation by asking Brent what advice he would give to someone wanting to get sober – like many of us he is blown away by the warmth and connection in the recovery world and he simply said:“Find Your People” – do check out tribesober.com as we may be your people and we would love to walk alongside you on this life changing journey
If you’d like copy of our PDF called “30 signs you may have a problem with alcohol” – just email [email protected]

 

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Till Next Week

Janet x

 

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