THE REHAB ALBUM

Sex, Drugs And Sobriety: When Getting Straight Is A Good Career Move

Heading into the Grammy Awards Feb. 13, one-time bad boy of rap Eminem
has 10 nominations and the top-selling album of 2010, with 3.4 million
copies sold. Now 38 years old, Eminem describes his tailspin with
lyrics that sound like quotes from group therapy, turning his infamous
verbal machine gun on himself: "I'm wallowin,' self-loathin' and
hollow. Bottoms up on the pill bottle. Maybe I'll hit my bottom
tomorrow," he raps. It may be the biggest album ever to deal
explicitly with getting sober.

The record, called "Recovery," is the latest in a time-honored musical
category: the rehab album. Just as drugs and alcohol have fueled much
of popular music, so, more quietly, has getting straight. Many artists
have flourished, commercially and artistically, after they got clean.
Critics who dismissed Eminem's previous album, the aptly titled
"Relapse," include the rapper himself, who pronounced it "ehhh" on
"Recovery." Eminem declined to comment.

When Eric Clapton finally kicked alcohol and heroin once and for all,
just before making "Journeyman," his solo career really hit its
stride. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' commercial breakthrough came in
1991 after lead singer Anthony Kiedis had emerged from narcotics
addiction, recalled in his anthem "Under the Bridge." After Metallica
(nicknamed "Alcoholica") went through a group therapy regimen that
included rehab for singer and lyricist James Hetfield, the band issued
"Death Magnetic" in 2008, widely noted as a return to form. Bonnie
Raitt and Steve Earle struggled in mid-career, dismissed their demons,
then enjoyed remarkable resurrections.

The record, called "Recovery," is the latest in a time-honored musical
category: the rehab album. Just as drugs and alcohol have fueled much
of popular music, so, more quietly, has getting straight. Many artists
have flourished, commercially and artistically, after they got clean.
Critics who dismissed Eminem's previous album, the aptly titled
"Relapse," include the rapper himself, who pronounced it "ehhh" on
"Recovery." Eminem declined to comment.

When Eric Clapton finally kicked alcohol and heroin once and for all,
just before making "Journeyman," his solo career really hit its
stride. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' commercial breakthrough came in
1991 after lead singer Anthony Kiedis had emerged from narcotics
addiction, recalled in his anthem "Under the Bridge." After Metallica
(nicknamed "Alcoholica") went through a group therapy regimen that
included rehab for singer and lyricist James Hetfield, the band issued
"Death Magnetic" in 2008, widely noted as a return to form. Bonnie
Raitt and Steve Earle struggled in mid-career, dismissed their demons,
then enjoyed remarkable resurrections.

Mr. Was produced the album "Nick of Time," which gave guitarist and
singer Ms. Raitt career lift-off and scored three Grammys in 1989, not
long after she purged herself of drugs and alcohol.

Ms. Raitt, who marks 24 years of sobriety next month, says she was no
train wreck. She'd picked up some bad habits after years on the
showbusiness night shift, aspiring to the weathered voice of Etta
James. But her decision to go straight was part of a broader action
plan, to rebound from a failed romance and a cancelled record
contract. Plus, she was overweight and in no state to appear next to
Prince in a music video that was in the offing, she says. "It was
about vanity and good business sense." Just as important: a kind of
reverse peer pressure. "I saw [recently sober friends] John Hiatt,
Stevie Ray Vaughn and Little Feat just being much more productive, and
they didn't lose their edge. All my excuses for wanting to be the last
bastion of the blues mama went out the window."

A year after taking her last drink, she retreated to a cabin in
northern California to work on music. The first song she wrote there
would eventually become the title track to "Nick of Time." The song
begins by describing battered veterans of romance and life, but the
last verse-including the line "You came along and showed me how to
leave it all behind"-is about "a redeeming love, a bigger kind of
love," she says. "It's completely a sobriety song."

For every artist who has shared a recovery story, there are others
whose exact history is private and murky. Relapses come and go.
Rockers generally don't send out press releases when they backslide.

Though artists have certainly written good songs while in recovery,
writing songs about the recovery process itself is a trickier matter.
"They get very cheesy very fast. With that language you're dealing
with a bunch of cliches," says singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle,
29.

A few years ago, after a stretch in rehab that capped a spiral of
homelessness and drug abuse, Mr. Earle started tinkering with a song
about the experience. At the time he was staying with his father, the
singer Steve Earle, who cratered in the mid-1990s with heroin and
jail, then after cleaning up went into a prolific creative rebirth.
Steve's advice about the song: Don't go there. If songwriting and
recovery don't remain separate, he counseled, "they can both suffer,"
Justin says. "It was one of the very few suggestions from a father you
pay attention to right off."

Now the younger Earle broaches the subject in lyrics more obliquely.
On his most recent album, "Harlem River Blues," he sings, "Why do I
try my luck? I should never touch the stuff" on the woozy blues tune
"Slippin' and Slidin.'"

"That was my realization song," Mr. Earle recalls. It was written last
summer when he was touring continuously, had already fallen off the
wagon and was on his way to cutting the album in full relapse, marked
by a diet of "vodka for breakfast and cocaine for dessert." He had to
keep his head, relatively speaking, in order to write and record the
songs on "Harlem River Blues," working on them during daylight hours
when he was pacing his vodka intake. His productivity would cease
around 5 p.m., "Usually by that time I was what most people call
drunk, then I'd go out and get what I consider drunk."

Last September, when Mr. Earle was touring in support of the album,
his mounting alcohol and cocaine abuse erupted in a violent
altercation with a club promoter in Indianapolis. He was arrested,
spent the night in jail and soon after was packed off to a rehab
facility in Tennessee.

Even in recovery, artists find vice irresistible, lyrically speaking.
Country star Joe Nichols, known for hits such as "Tequila Makes Her
Clothes Fall Off," included a song on his most recent album about his
struggles called "An Old Friend of Mine." (Sample line: "I heard
freedom ring when that bottle hit the floor.") He dealt with the topic
in more typical country fashion on the next track, "Let's Get Drunk
and Fight."

Stars who go straight often bump up against the expectations of fans
in thrall of glorious victims such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.
When Courtney Love, widow of rocker Kurt Cobain, staged a comeback for
her band Hole, sobriety formed part of the narrative. Some found the
theme a bit contrived. "Teetering on train-wreck territory is part of
Love's appeal as a rock star," wrote music critic Greg Kot in the
Chicago Tribune of the album containing such songs as "Loser Dust."
But he also complained that she sometimes sounded like "a domesticated
folk rocker. "

Countless hit songs have dealt with getting addicted, sometimes
gleefully. Eminem's Grammy-nominated single "Not Afraid," is the rare
hit about emerging on the other side. "I'm strong enough to go to the
club or the corner pub/and lift the whole liquor counter up/cause I'm
raising the bar," he raps.

But the rapper doesn't get too preachy. Most of "Recovery" is devoted
to his stock in trade: vivid trash talking. "Frankly, that's more
interesting," says Ken Zambello a professor at Berklee College of
Music. He adds that sobriety probably benefits most artists physically
more than artistically. "Sometimes their success had to do with the
fact that they were able to live another 20 years and have a larger
body of work," he says, referring to enduring acts such as Johnny
Cash, Judy Collins and Tom Waits.

Twenty years ago, the music industry moved to install a safety net. A
foundation of the Recording Academy, MusiCares, now operates a fund
that helps place financially-strapped members of the music business in
addiction treatment programs. About 200 people, from songwriters to
roadies, join that program annually. Each year, the fund mounts a
benefit concert that could double as a star-studded Alcoholics
Anonymous gathering. Past benefits have featured Mr. Hetfield of
Metallica and Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash. Other former casualties
of the rock lifestyle, including Ozzy Osbourne, have targeted their
peers with video messages.

"Don't buy into the bulls-that dope makes you more creative, because
it does not. I'm not dead, but I'm damaged goods," Mr. Osbourne says
in one clip.

The artistic challenges of recovery can be complicated by the
pressures exerted by managers, agents and record label executives who
have a financial stake in keeping their acts on the road or in the
studio. "We sometimes hear, "'He has 10 days free. What can he do in
10 days?' And to that we say, 'Slow down,'" says Debbie Carroll,
executive director of MusiCares, who oversees the addiction-related
MAP Fund.

Justin Townes Earle's slowdown came abruptly. "I woke up with my
girlfriend, my lawyer, my booking agent and some guy I've never seen
before sitting around my bed getting ready to take me off to
treatment," Mr. Earle recalled in a telephone interview from Belfast
in Northern Ireland. Following his September dust-up, he spent about a
month in rehab. There, Mr. Earle wasn't allowed to play guitar. Such
rules are common in facilities where the goal is to strip away
elements of outside life that may be associated with abuse.

Now Mr. Earle is back on tour. He recently performed on David
Letterman's show. He says he is sober, but maybe not for good. "I'm
never going to say it's not going to happen again. I'm smart enough to
know that."

[sidebar]

Straight Sets

Six Artists Who Came Back With Big Records After Getting Sober

Bonnie Raitt, 'Nick of Time', 1989

Sample lyric: "You came along and showed me how to leave it all
behind."

By 1987 the rock 'n' roll lifestyle had taken its toll on the singer,
now 61 years old. The resulting album transformed her into a
mainstream star and racked up three Grammy awards.

Eric Clapton, 'Journeyman', 1989

"How many times must we tell the tale? How many times must we
fall?"

The guitarist had been in and out of rehab before, but the treatment
finally took at the same time that he embraced an accessible
high-gloss sound that yielded hits such as "Pretending."

Steve Earle, 'Train a Comin', 1985

"Was I off somewhere or maybe just too high, but I can't remember if
we said goodbye."

The roots rocker's career is synonymous with rebirth, first marked by
this acoustic album, released after he'd clawed back from narcotics
addiction, torched marriages and jail time.

Nine Inch Nails, 'With Teeth', 2005

"The more I stay in here, the more I disappear."

Front man Trent Reznor grappled with doubts about his own creative
abilities in making this album, his first after a pivotal stretch in
rehab

Metallica, 'Death Magnetic', 2008

"Like a raging river drowning when I only need a drink."

After chasing '90s alt-rock trends, the band underwent group therapy,
including a stint in rehab for singer and lyricist James Hetfield, and
returned to its strengths with this thrash-metal release.

El DeBarge, 'Second Chance', 2010

"I played the game and lost in space, but I have cleansed myself by
walking through the rain"

The album's Grammy-nominated title track reflects the singer's ongoing
turnaround after multiple drug-related arrests and about a year in
prison.