From crystal meth to Cristal champagne, The Used’s Bert McCracken’s had it all. Now 13 years sober, the emo pioneer has experienced both extreme highs and lows throughout his life, but always found the strength to come back better with emotionally driven, ink-stained missives on love, death and everything in between. To mark The Used’s 25th anniversary, we unravel how he reached the brink and bounced back.
YOU MIGHT CHANGE…
“25 years ago, I was a totally different person. I was a little unhinged, wild and ready to bring chaos to whatever situation I was faced with. A lot of the antics and shenanigans created hype around the band – ‘the singer’s crazy, he throws up on stage, blah, blah, blah.’ I haven’t seen many videos of me at my worst, but there’s one where I’m really wasted. I honestly can’t believe who I was.”
BUT YOU CAN’T CHANGE THE PAST
“I often think whether I’d change anything about my past, but I don’t think that I would – life has to play its course. Every decision I made has gotten me to this point in life. Honestly, even if I could go back and tell myself to stop, I would just get laughed at. You could say it’s ironic I was in a straight-edge hardcore band before The Used… they kicked me out when I started smoking weed. It went downhill from there.”
FIND YOUR OWN PATH
“I grew up in a very religious, conservative household. Everything was verboten; Nirvana was taboo, rock and roll was taboo. But it was my disagreements with the church that led me away from my house. I was living on couches, trailer parks. I was into super heavy drugs, smoking meth, getting into every kind of trouble I could get into. But I have a great relationship with my parents now. After a few years of the band being successful, they understood. I know some people live their lives without their parents around, but I think it’s been important for me to reconnect with them. Some of those years when my parents weren’t in my life were pretty reckless.”
WRITE FROM THE HEART
“Music is full of beauty and mistakes. Each record represents a different point in my life, what was going on at that time. That’s why I’d never change anything about my old songs. I like to look back at those moments and get a glimpse of who I was. [2017’s] The Canyon will always be particularly special. The record was about my friend who committed suicide, so we never wanted to rush anything. We recorded it without computers, totally on tape, and I never set myself any deadlines for my lyrics. It was quite a spiritual experience.”
GIVE IT YOUR ALL
“I saw Alkaline Trio open up for MU330 in ’98, right when Goddamnit came out, and there were zero people at the show. I was stoked – it was back when they were still wearing makeup on stage and stuff. We got a private show and met the band. For the first couple of years, that’s what our shows were like, just playing to the bartender. But you’ve just gotta go for it, go as crazy as you would for a sold-out crowd. For us, we can’t help but go crazy. We love it so much.”
PICK UP A BOOK
“My mum was a teacher, so I’ve always loved to read. I think that when I quit drinking, that was my gateway back into books – it was like a replacement drug. The type of escape that I get from reading is undeniable. And so many authors are incredible; anything Vladimir Nabokov wrote, I love. People who don’t read are missing out; to me, reading 1984 is like putting on a cooking show. It’s my comfort read, and I re-read it every year. I try to put all my favourite books into song titles… I’m just a big nerd, basically. Maybe the names can inspire other people to check some of the books out.”
SPEND WISELY
“I used to be so terrible with money. I’d buy Cristal champagne – and you might think I didn’t seem like a champagne man, but I was an ‘anything’ man. Any drink, any drug, I was your man. I used to tear up bills, and tip way too much. I just didn’t have any cares in the world. I was definitely the kind of person to do the whole TV-out-the-window shit and wreck hotel rooms. Nowadays, I would think of whoever had to clean that up. But that’s who I was. If I could go back, I’d probably tell myself to stop acting like that.”
ACCEPT YOURSELF
“I grew up as Rob. Bert kind of came about because I was in a Ska-punk band with another Rob, and so they called me Bert instead and it kind of stuck. Sometimes it can feel like Bert and Rob are separate. I think that’s a little bit of the reasoning behind my solo pop project being named Robbietheused. I’m kind of getting some perspective: who is Rob? Who is Bert? Where do the two connect? But Bert is always going to be a huge part of me. I’m very proud and grateful to be Bert from The Used, and I always will be.”
KNOW YOUR LIMIT
“Any true addict or alcoholic knows that you have to hit the bottom of the bottom to realise you have to bounce back. For me, it took years of dragging along the bottom before I finally made a change. There were multiple shows that I would show up for fully black-out drunk. I don’t remember them, I just remember waking up like, ‘Did we play the show?’ I think at that point, you know you’re fucking up. It reached a point where my band was sick of me, my wife was sick of me. I was in and out of hospitals and I was literally about to lose everything. I just knew I had to stop – so I gave up, went to rehab.”
DON’T TELL BERT ‘NO’
“First year we played main stage on Warped Tour, there were these big, giant speaker stacks. On the first day, one of the stagehands was like, ‘You won’t jump off there.’ So it became this little inside joke every day. He’d go, ‘You won’t jump today, it’s too far.’ Of course, my response would be ‘Yeah, right!’ I jumped off that thing every day. Reverse psychology… it worked on me. I think growing up in a conservative household kind of hands you that on a plate. If you’re told you can’t do something, you just have to.”
POETRY IS NOT A LUXURY
“I always loved poetry – my second-grade teacher even took me aside and gave me special attention for my writing and poems. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot changed my life. I decided to memorise the entire poem, all 42 minutes. I also have so much Shakespeare memorised. I conducted this experiment with my daughter, trying to teach her soliloquies before she could speak – she had ‘to be or not to be’ nailed by the time she was four. So cute. Now I recite onstage because a mosh pit is a good excuse to recite some Hamlet.”
LOVE WHAT YOU DO
“If you love to play, do it all day long. If there’s a real passion, I think there’s a career in it for anyone. The same goes for everything – if you’re passionate, put that into what you’re doing. I was a Subway sandwich artist for a while, and I was very, very passionate. I would put my heart into every sandwich I made. So commit to what you love, entirely.”
STEP OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE
“Having kids teaches you a lot about love – you learn what love can be, and what love should be. I love them to death, and I’d do anything to make them happy. We used to live in Los Angeles, but it didn’t really feel like the right place to raise kids. So we moved to Australia, and I’ve lived here for nearly 13 years now. You get used to them, but there’s lots of scary critters. The first time I saw one, I was sitting out on our balcony, and a spider the size of my hand dropped down on a web right in front of me. It set me off – I love my wife, but it was definitely one of those ‘What am I thinking?’ moments.”
REACH OUT
“There’s no one like my younger self – he broke the mould. But, if anyone is on a similar path, there’s going to be a point in time where you can’t keep it up. And if you can’t keep it up, I’m here for you. I’ll open an office to help people out, invite people to talk over a desk, get myself a little name badge… After all that I’ve been through, I’m very open-minded. There’s nothing I haven’t been through, believe me."
The Used's latest album Medz is out now
