During a recent appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, The Pretty Reckless frontwoman Taylor Momsen reflected on her struggle with depression following the deaths of Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and her friend and producer Kato Khandwala.
Describing Khandwala’s passing as “the nail in the coffin for me,” Momsen explained that the grief she felt after losing those two led to a period of substance abuse.
“It was a giant one-two punch because they were not that far apart from each other,” she said. “I just went off the rails, I didn’t handle that well. I got very heavy into substance abuse and this cloud of depression that I couldn’t shake.”
“I had to make a very conscious choice at a point where I was either going to live or I was going to die and I had to either stop everything I was doing and get my life together, or this was going to kill me,” she continued. “I luckily chose to move forward but it was that serious.”
Momsen went on to say that she eventually found comfort in music.
“I got to a place where I could start listening to records again. I very calculatedly went, ‘Where did I fall in love with this? How do I find myself again?’ So I started at the very beginning, which was The Beatles.”
Earlier this month, Momsen filled in for the late Chris Cornell during Soundgarden’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Together, Momsen, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready performed “Rusty Cage.” They were then joined on stage by singer Brandi Carlile and Alice in Chains’ guitarist Jerry Cantrell for “Black Hole Sun.”
