“Being humble is something I try to do on a daily basis.” Simon Kirke's rock 'n' roll fantasyĪlthough born in London, Kirke spent his formative years in the English countryside, where the slower pace of life was a far cry from the bright lights and big cities of his rock ‘n’ roll fantasies. “We have to embrace humility much more than the grandiosity of being well-known and respected and having people fawning over you, because those things can get into your head very, very easily,” Kirke said. The former made him a star, but the latter gave him perspective, he added. He works with recovering addicts in New York City, primarily teens and young adults whose lives have been derailed by drugs and alcohol, and he continues to give equal attention to both his first love - music - and the thing that save his life: recovery. It would be many years and more trials and tribulations before Kirke found his way out of that darkness permanently, but today, he hasn’t touched cocaine in almost a quarter-century, and he’s been sober from booze for more than five years now. And so he said, ‘I recommend you go to rehab and clean up, which I did, because I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.” “And he said, “you have to be honest with me: What is your drinking like? What is your smoking like?,’ because my fingers were brown from cigarette smoke. Your liver is saying, “I’ve had enough of this shit I’m out of here!”’ Apparently, it was twice the size of normal. And he said, ‘Your liver is so swollen that it’s trying to leave your body. “The doctor put his hand around where my liver was and pressed, and I felt this jolt of pain. “I was sweating, even in the coldest of days, and I couldn’t breathe properly. Despite those cautionary tales, however, Kirke wasn’t able to avoid the tar pit trap of chemical excess, and when he finally shuffled into his doctor’s office that year, he was in bad shape, he told The Ties That Bind Us recently. He'd seen addiction derail the former, and as the ringer on the Swan Song label - set up by and around Led Zeppelin - Bad Company had a ringside seat to the voracious appetites of two of rock’s legendary hedonists, John Bonham and Jimmy Page. By 1980, drummer Simon Kirke had topped the charts with not one, but two legendary rock ‘n’ roll bands: Free, whose seminal hit “All Right Now” has been a go-to feel-good hit since its release in 1970, and Bad Company, the greatest hits of which are burned into the brains of anyone who came of age during the classic rock era.
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