It was later explained to me that both these unusual abilities – to not get that drunk and to never suffer a hangover – were actually part of the problem. That’s because they are both ways of your body telling you to stop. Being drunk and all the head-swimming, leg-wobbling nausea that comes with it is simply your body being unable to cope with what you are putting into it and it gets alarmed: the signals are pretty obvious. Likewise a hangover has put many a drinker off continuing. Not me. And that might seem funny for a while, but actually it was all part of a lethal cocktail of circumstances – drink, excess, exhaustion and bad health – that nearly killed me.
I class myself as lucky to still be alive. Let me share the legacy of excess I can ‘boast’: amongst numerous self-inflicted health issues, I’ve had alcoholic hepatitis, chronic pneumonia, double pneumonia, pleurisy, legionnaires’ disease and heart attacks.
Nothing to bloody boast about, I know.
I have really pushed my luck.
I’d given up smoking in 1979 but it wasn’t until 1985 that I finally gave up the drink. I think there is no doubt that I probably wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that. The drink was the worst problem.
At one point they gave me six months to live if I didn’t stop.
That did the trick.
If fear gets hold of you it can be the greatest doctor you could wish for, and the greatest counsellor. I was an astonishing drinker –
I used to drink port and brandy in pint glasses: half a pint of port and half a pint of brandy in a pint glass, that was ‘my’ drink . . . with beer chasers. I’d drink phenomenal amounts of beer, wine, port, brandy, all sorts. Of course, it caught up with me in the end and, when it did, it was like being run over by a juggernaut.
I was in Australia and started feeling unwell. Up until this point I had felt fine, it sort of came out of the blue. I couldn’t keep any food down, I kept suddenly falling asleep in the middle of the day, my skin had this awful yellow pallor, I couldn’t always control my bodily functions and I was losing weight fast. I could tell that my organs were basically stopping working – the pancreas, the liver – my body was shutting down, my innards were collapsing. It was obvious that I was really ill.
When I came back from Australia, nobody recognised me because in three weeks I’d lost three and a half stone. I had a doctor friend in Harley Street called David Myers so I went to see him and explained my symptoms. Without even examining me, he said, ‘Rick, I know exactly what is wrong with you. You have alcoholic hepatitis, I’m afraid, as well as all sorts of other problems probably. I’ll do some blood tests and a full examination and see what’s working but we may also have to set up a biopsy.’
When the results came through, he explained that my liver function was severely depleted and my kidneys were equally suffering.
‘But they are still working, aren’t they?’ I said, my ignorance making me feel almost positive.
‘Yes, they are, but they will continue to deteriorate, I’m afraid, unless you take drastic action. The good news is that some organs are actually regenerative, so in time you might be able to make a near-full recovery. But if you don’t do what I tell you
today
the consequences will be critical. You have to stop drinking otherwise the downward spiral will continue.’
‘So what do you think, then?’
‘Six months.’
‘OK, no drink for six months, I can do that.’
‘No, Rick, six months to live. Unless you do what I say. And if your functions drop below this line here,’ he said, pointing at a graph, ‘. . . maybe less.’
I was struck dumb.
I was absolutely shitting myself.
This was 1985 and I was only thirty-six.
‘Your drinking days are over, Rick. They are absolutely one hundred per cent over. You will need to follow a strict diet plan, and you will need to come to see me weekly at first, for pretty much constant monitoring. I cannot promise you that you will come out of this, even if you take my advice. For starters, you will experience terrible withdrawal symptoms that in some cases have been known to be fatal themselves. However, if you don’t do what I say I can promise you that you won’t be around for much longer.’
I was due to become a dad again in eight months’ time and it was quite chilling when he said, ‘I have to be honest with you and tell you that you may not live to see him.’
He didn’t need to say anything else.
I walked out of the clinic, right down York Street and into a pub called the Duke of York, a favoured haunt of The Strawbs in the days of some very heavy drinking sessions. The barman knew me well and, naturally, he asked me what I wanted to drink.
‘A tomato juice, please.’
‘OK. Had a hard night boozing, Rick?’
‘No, I don’t drink any more.’
I was never the type to ‘cut down’. I had to stop completely, just like Dr Myers said. He also gave me a list of names he said I’d need to get help from for the incredible withdrawal symptoms including AA and other rehab places.
But do you know what?
I never had a single symptom, not one. Just like when I gave up smoking.
Nothing: no shakes, no hallucinations, no sweats, nothing. (Barry the Perv still sweated more than I did, just from being a perv.)
People ask me how that can be and I put it down to fear. I’d never been so terrified in my whole life and I’ve been close to the old Grim Reaper on a few occasions, let me tell you, but my condition was totally self-inflicted, the closest thing to medical suicide. After a while I’d recovered enough for the six-month prediction to have evaporated, but I could still become incapacitated enough to stop me working in the long term. The climate of music at the time was not particularly generous to the likes of me, but I didn’t care, I just loved playing. I remember one day after I’d been to see Dr Myers I went back home and played the piano. It was
so
enjoyable and I thought to myself,
Do you really want to lose this? To lose what you love doing, being creative, making and playing music?
Eventually my organs started to work again as they should; it’s a remarkable thing, the human body. Incredibly, despite my awful history, I recently had a medical which showed that in my late-fifties I am actually fitter than when I was in my thirties. I’m extraordinarily fortunate.
I think that when you are in your teens and your twenties and even your thirties, the word ‘death’ is not in your vocabulary. On the odd occasion it does crop up, it’s usually a granny or an old aunt or, if you are unlucky, someone who’s been in an accident. You do not associate death with your life at that age. That is reflected in what you do to your body – in my case I gave it a complete battering. You drink to excess and maybe smoke like a chimney, even though you know that both activities are killing you. You’re not stupid: you’ve read all the articles and seen all the bulletins. But you do it anyway. It’s when you hit your forties – and then definitely your fifties – that death becomes a little
more relevant and very frightening. Fortunately for me, by that stage I was long since recovered. Sadly, that’s not always the case for many of my peers. I saw one survey claim that the average life expectancy of a rock star is forty-six. That sounds very low but I do know that there is a huge list of contemporaries and friends of mine who aren’t here any more.
My saving grace was never having taken drugs. One of the funniest things was on the first Yes shows I did in America; we walked on and the audience used to throw spliffs on the stage – it’s a slight exaggeration, but it felt like you were knee-deep in them. I mentioned this in an interview for an American magazine where I said that I had never taken drugs in my life and had no intention of ever doing so, as life was such a great natural high if you allowed it to be so, and the journalist asked me what my poison was and I replied, ‘Drink, mainly beer, but spirits too.’ From that moment, I’d arrive onstage to find cans and cans of alcohol piled up high by the side of the stage near my keyboards. If I’d replied ‘drugs’, I wouldn’t be here now.
We’ve talked about the fact that I do everything to excess. I wouldn’t have been content just to smoke the odd joint, I’d have taken copious amounts of everything. It would have killed me. I knew that and so I kept away.
Just as well I did.
Drugs would have been experienced to total excess, just like the drink, cigarettes, cars, my hair and the wives . . . although a drug habit would possibly have been less expensive than the wives.
Now to the part you’ve been racing through this chapter to get to.
Flatulence.
The problem was, for myself, and it has to be said for most bands at the time, with a predilection for curry, alcohol and ongoing dubious health issues, flatulence was a very prominent feature of my daily life.
Not all the time, don’t get me wrong.
Like not when I was sleeping, for example.
I don’t think.
I had ‘form’ as they say, I’d got ‘previous’. All of my band had severe flatulence problems. It’s not uncommon among musicians. It’s probably a combination of bad diet, bad lifestyles, beer, lack of fitness generally. One time in America with the English Rock Ensemble, everyone except me (for a change) had disgraceful flatulence. This American woman came in to interview me in the dressing room after a show and she could hardly get a word in for all the farting from the band. It was an art form for them. Carefully posed positions were very important. Standing on a chair and pre-empting what was to follow with ‘Get a load of this one, chaps’ was routine. Worse still, they had odour. She was disgusted and wasn’t backwards in coming forwards in complaining. I tried in vain to conduct a serious interview while the rest of the band farted, gave marks out of ten for each effort on a whiteboard, and laughed uncontrollably. Eventually, she gave up and left in disgust. I could hardly disapprove because I was often the worst culprit, but I didn’t fancy smelling their arses for the remainder of the evening, so I went to bed. When the article came out, she’d written: ‘I accept they are phenomenal musicians and the show was undeniably tremendous, but they are not the kind of people I’d like to spend time with. The stench in the dressing room within minutes of coming off stage was not something I would inflict upon my worst enemy.’
And I fully expect that after I left the band that night, they continued their flatulence competition long into the early hours. But under no circumstances was I going to hang around and see who won.
‘I’VE GOT CHE GUEVARA IN THE SHED’
I had always wanted to travel to Cuba. I wanted to go for one reason and one reason only: the music. The regime there had effectively, and in several ways quite rightly too, isolated Cuba from many aspects of the modern world for decades, but what that meant to me was that the music had not been ‘bastardised’, infected by outside influence. To a musician like me, that offered a musical culture with a purity that was very enticing. I’d been to Eastern Europe before the Wall came down, as you know, and to South Africa during the apartheid years, where I got into all sorts of trouble because I’d worked with black choirs and musicians . . . but that’s another story . . .
I have, indeed, collected quite a few air miles on my jaunts around the world, but Cuba was always just out of reach. Obviously, it was politically problematic but nonetheless I had tried and tried and tried, year after year after year, to no avail. The closest I’d got was that a Cuban lawyer friend in Tenerife had persevered very hard for several years, but even he had no luck.
There were people who had managed to get down there. John Lennon was one of those musicians and there’s even a monument
to him in one of the parks – Lennon became quite a hero to the Cuban people and Castro ordered the monument to be created. Then, of course, there were smaller bands and lower-profile acts who’d gone there and played jazz places and festivals. But our band and show was a big concern and it wasn’t happening. It could have been worse – American bands were just banned outright.
Then, in about 2006, I met a Swiss-Italian called Riki Braga who came to a show I was doing in Switzerland and afterwards he asked to talk to me about doing a charity show. Now, I get dozens and dozens of such requests, so it can be very hard to give them all the attention they deserve, but he seemed very nice so I asked him to tell me more. He explained that he and a friend were raising funds for a children’s cancer hospital, and he went into great detail about what a brilliant charity it was and how hard they worked for these sick kids.
‘Where is it in Switzerland?’ I asked.
‘It’s in Cuba,’ he replied.
‘Well, unfortunately, that’s just knocked it on the head because I can’t get in there to play – been trying for years.’
‘I can get you in.’
‘Really? How?’
‘There is authorisation from the government.’
Now I was starting to get palpitations.
‘Are you serious?’ Then reality hit home. ‘Well, that sounds good but as soon as they look into my background we will be finished. Even though I am aware of Castro, Che Guevara and Cuban history and fully understand their situation, my personal politics will not be popular – I am a fully paid-up card-carrying member of the British Conservative Party. Also, my fiancée is a journalist from the West. So I can’t see one of the last remaining communist countries in the world opening their doors to me.’
He listened to me and then said, ‘Rick, you have already been cleared to play there.’
Now this was serious.
‘What? Who by?’
‘By Fidel Castro himself.’
‘You’re having me on.’
He wasn’t.
I was so excited that I could hardly sleep. I was later introduced to the man who ran the fund raising for the hospital and was very impressed. Adding that charity to the chance to play in Cuba was just perfect.
Once I’d calmed down, the practicalities of playing there reared their ugly head. Logistically, the problems were colossal. For a start, as it was a charity show there was no funding available, obviously. The cost of getting myself, the band and all our extensive gear down to Cuba was
astronomical
. So we figured out that if we planned our route carefully and flew back via a couple of shows in Mexico and Costa Rica, that would help to part-finance these substantial expenses. Although I’d already been cleared, the immigration paperwork was a nightmare because there were few real precedents for bands going to Cuba on this scale so no forms actually existed, and the process was fraught with problems. But we eventually got the rubber stamp in all the right places. A caveat was that although we could get the gear to Cuba easily enough, the planes flying out of Cuba back to Mexico were not big enough to transport our equipment so we weren’t even sure how we were going to get our stuff to the next port of call after the shows in Cuba. I have to say I didn’t really care if I was left heavily out of pocket and without my gear – like with
King Arthur on Ice
I was at 9.8 on the ‘Don’t-Give-a-Toss-Meter’. The most important thing was to make it work because I wanted
so
much to go to Cuba.