Muse Drummer Battled Alcoholism

Muse have had one hell of a September. After premiering their music video for “Madness“, Muse battled getting sued, which was shortly followed by the clearing up that Muse‘s Matt Bellamy claiming 9/11 was an inside job.

Now, Muse are coming out with the news that hard-partying drummer Chris Wolstenholme was a bit of a drunk. Wolstenholme admitted he has had a drinking problem for the majority of his time in Muse, and said he had managed to keep it a secret to most people, including his band mates, as he “wasn’t a nasty drunk”. More from the Guardian.

his father, a pub landlord, drank himself to death when he was 40. Wolstenholme combines rock-solid blokiness with the compulsive candour of someone who has undergone rehab. Only his nervous hand-rubbing betrays the weirdness of discussing the worst experience of his life with a stranger.

His drinking began in earnest when Muse‘s career first took off and he was away from his family for as long as two months at a time. As the band grew so did his intake, until he was knocking back a pint of spirits, two bottles of wine and countless beers a day. It seems inconceivable that, for several years, nobody but his wife realised there was a problem. “I kept my guard up,” he says. “I was quite crafty about how I drank and where I did it. Matt and Dom probably didn’t realise how bad it was because I wasn’t a nasty drunk. I didn’t cause anybody any problems. I just retreated.”

“For some reason he could still play the bass, even though he was shitfaced,” says Howard. “It went wrong literally two or three times in 10 years, which is nothing.” Eventually, however, it became unignorable. “He was drinking on stage,” says Howard. “I started counting how many drinks he was having during the set and I could see him getting more and more glazed. By the point we came off stage he’d be fucked. It just got too weird.”