Former Screaming Trees and Mad Season drummer Barrett Martin discussed witnessing friends in both his personal and professional life deal with addiction in a new interview on The Trap Set with Joe Wong.
“Addictions and self-destructive behavior, I’ve seen what that can do to people, how it kills their soul. I saw it very young, very early in my life, and also professionally in music. It was very hard to see people destroy themselves like that. In the five major rock bands I was in, three of the singers passed away, and one of the bass players.
A lot of our friends died from drug overdoses and just self-destructive lifestyles. I knew I wasn’t going to go that way, so I made a decision pretty early on to be healthy and take care of myself.”
He later said, “I was raised from the boot strap point of view, I came from a very working class family actually that just believed in hard work. I took that and applied it to music, because I loved music. I think maybe that’s why I prevailed in some situations when others didn’t, both just in life, but also in music as an art form. But I also think that some people kind of have a propensity for the dark side, so they’ll kind of be drawn to that, and if they’re not careful it will pull them in, and I’ve seen that happen too.”
