KORN's Drummer Claims He's One Of Very Few Rock Stars To Never Touch Drugs

There's certain baggage that comes with being a rock star, or so stereotypes would lead you to believe.

Once upon a time to be labelled a man of rock you'd have to have thrown a television out of a hotel window, smashed a guitar on stage and taken a cocktails of drugs that'd put Scarface to shame.

As time has moved on, the image, that was built up by the likes of The Who's Keith Moon, has somewhat deteriorated whereby there's less hotel trashing, less instrument smashing, but the drug use is still prevalent.

Credit: PA

KORN's drummer Ray Luzier is an example of the stereotype not being applicable to everyone, as he claims he's one of the only rock stars to never have touched drugs.

"[Early on in my career] I went to Los Angeles to go to a music school, and right away when I went to the music school, I saw a lot of drugs and I saw a lot of pot and I saw a lot of people just there for the wrong reasons," he told The You Rock Foundation.

"And I've always been there for a hundred percent music; I wanted to better my craft, I wanted to get better at playing. So I decided, every time I'd go to a party and I'd see people partaking in these actions, in these activities, I decided not to do it, because I saw the repercussions - I saw the next day how hungover they'd be - and, to me, it wasn't fun.

"So I'm one of the few rock and rollers that's a lifer - and I will be doing this till the day I die - that has never taken a drug. And only for that reason, I saw what it did to other people."

Credit: PA

While it'd be unfair to say that he's the only man to have done this, it's fair to say that there's probably very few others.

Tabloids, magazines and so on would never do half as well if the hook was that a musician stayed tee total through their career, whereas if one wants to show off that they used to do cocaine through their arse, it's lapped up by fans.

Luzier also seems to allude to the fact that some people think that to be a musician it means that you have to do drugs, or at least party in excess. It's obviously not the case, and as he says, can lead to disastrous repercussions.

Topics: Music, Drugs, US Entertainment

Mark McGowan

Mark is a journalist at LADbible, who joined in 2015 after a year as a freelance writer. In the past he blogged for independent football fan channel Redmen TV, after graduating from Staffordshire University with degrees in journalism and English literature. He has worked on campaigns such as UOKM8? and IIOC.