The Strokes have revealed a number of difficulties in their relationship with Ryan Adams.
The revelations are covered in Lizzy Goodman's new book Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City, covering indie rock's New York rebirth in the opening years of the Noughties.
The journalist speaks to the scene's major figures, with The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Vampire Weekend, and Interpol all contributing to the oral history.
Out on May 23rd, Lizzy Goodman shared an excerpt with New York Magazine containing a number of revelations.
In it, The Strokes would seem to blame Ryan Adams for Albert Hammond Jr.'s descent into heroin addiction, a move that helped derail the group.
“Ryan would always come and wake me at two in the morning and have drugs, so I’d just do the drugs and kind of numb out,” Hammond said. “I knew I would shoot up drugs from a very young age. I’d been wanting to do heroin since I was 14 years old.”
“I remember Julian (Casablancas) threatening to beat Ryan (Adams) up if he hung out with me, as a protective thing,” the guitarist added. “He’d heard that Ryan would come and give me heroin, so he was just like, ‘If you come to my apartment again with heroin, I’m going to kick your ass.’ I hadn’t really been doing it in baggie form until Ryan showed up. He was definitely a bad influence.”
For his part, Ryan Adams denied these events. “I loved him so deeply. I would never ever have given him a bag of heroin. I remember being incredibly worried about him, even after I continued to do speedballs… I didn’t do drugs socially, and I don’t remember doing drugs with Albert ever. I wanted to smoke cigarettes and drink, like, dark red wine or vodka and write all night.”
The songwriter did, however, recall a full sit down meeting with The Strokes in which they warned him away from Albert Hammond Jr. He recalls: “It was very dramatic, the way it all went down… I was asked to meet one single person in a bar and I got there and it was the whole band and Ryan.” “I was more or less given a lecture, a hypocritical lecture, and then they told me that I was not going to be part of their scene any more. It was very weird. It was easy to brand me as the problem. I would suspect that they soon learned that I was not the problem.”
Read the full feature HERE.
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