Photo: Emma Viola Lilja
A new book about the New York rock scene of the early part of the 21st century reveals how The Strokes blame Ryan Adams for getting their guitarist, Albert Hammond Jr, hooked on heroin.
Meet Me In The Bathroom: Rebirth And Rock And Roll In New York City by Lizzy Goodman is an oral history of the bands that made up the Big Apple’s music scene at the turn of the millennium. Contributors include The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol and many others.
“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 alleged in the book, a section of which has been shared in New York Magazine. “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,” Hammond continued. “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.”
Responding to the allegations, Adams denied that he’d ever given Hammond heroin. He told Goodman: “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.”
Whatever the ins and outs of Hammond’s drug problems, the guitarist expresses remorse and regret at the pain he caused his bandmates: ““I’m sorry I killed everyone’s dreams. I don’t know if they’re still mad at me.”
