U2’S Adam Clayton has revealed his alcohol addiction led him on a three-day bender and he missed a gig in Australia.
The 59-year-old admitted the band’s international success “very much went to my head”.
Speaking about the 1993 incident, he said he had two glasses of wine on the eve of a recording of the Zoo TV show and he completely blacked out.
Clayton said: “I know about three days later I woke up and I had not turned up for a gig, in a stadium, that was being filmed, a lot of money resting on it, a lot of jeopardy.
“I had let the guys down, the three guys who had stood by me since the age of 16 or 17. I mean I’m sure it was unimaginable to them that could have happened. I let down the audience, I let down the road crew.”
The bass guitarist said that was the moment that led him to acknowledge his issues with alcohol.
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Clayton along with Bono, The Edge, and Larry Mullen Jnr were in their 20s when U2’s popularity exploded. He said on the Tommy Tiernan Show on Saturday: “Success very much went to my head. You lose your sense of yourself you lose a sense of reality.
“I was kind of very unhappy so I drank and I drugged and got myself in tabloid newspapers, and embarrassed kind of everyone I knew, and myself.
“But, you know, you come through it and you learn from it and maybe that’s what young men do anyway.”
Clayton said he still struggles and has to “work really quite hard at keeping my sanity on and off the road”.
But he added: “I’m really glad I’m here, I’m able to talk to you about it, because the alternative would have been a lot worse.”
