Photo: Ryan Dusick | By Lyndsey Parker, Editor in Chief, Yahoo Music | In 2006, Ryan Dusick seemed to be living the dream alongside his childhood best friends. The founding drummer of rock band Maroon 5, Dusick had first met his “annoying little brother” Adam Levine when he was 12 and Levine was 10, and after a false start with their underrated, pre-Maroon 5 powerpop band Kara’s Flowers in the late ‘90s, their decade of hard work had finally paid off. Maroon 5’s landmark debut album, Songs About Jane, had sold 10 million copies and spawned four top 40 hits. They were playing on SNL, jamming at Prince’s house, hanging out with Justin Timberlake and Bono and touring arenas with John Mayer. They’d even just won the Grammy for Best New Artist the year before.
But just as Maroon 5 began work on their follow-up album, Levine — who had long since emerged from Dusick’s shadow to become the group’s leader — called a band meeting at Rick Rubin’s “Houdini Mansion” home/studio to inform Dusick that his services would no longer be needed. Dusick was fired from the band he’d helped create.
Dusick may have been blindsided at the time (his bandmates had promised him that he would always be a part of Maroon 5 and they would not make another album without him), but his mental and physical issues — anxiety and burnout from years of nonstop touring; the aggravation of wrist/shoulder/back injuries, stemming from his highly competitive childhood softball days, that resulted in chronic nerve damage — had started becoming insurmountable, just as Maroon 5 were finally breaking through to the mainstream. By the time the band made the difficult but unavoidable decision to permanently replace Dusick with Matt Flynn, Flynn was already their touring drummer. Dusick was still joining Maroon 5 on the road as an entourage member, watching from the wings and attending afterparties in an increasingly futile effort to maintain a bond with his buddies and hold onto his former glory, but he was unable to actually physically perform.
“I think if I was blindsided, it was just because I was in denial. The writing was on the wall,” Dusick — who revisits his trauma and eventual triumph in his new book, Harder to Breathe: A Memoir of Making Maroon 5, Losing It All, and Finding Recovery — tells Yahoo Entertainment. “It had been dragging on for like a year and a half at that point, and they were very graciously giving me a lot of time and a lot of opportunity to work through what was a problem. It was the elephant in the room, that of which we do not speak. I would pretend like I was doing great and put on this party-animal/rock-star alter ego, but everyone knew that I was struggling underneath that. It was just too uncomfortable to even talk about. When it finally happened, it was like, ‘There’s no more denying this.’ If it was a shock, it was more just like, ‘Let me hold onto this denial a little longer. I don’t want to let go.’”
The band went on to enjoy even greater success, while Dusick, having lost his ability to play along with his passion for music, embarked upon a “lost weekend” of drugs, depression, alcohol and anxiety that lasted nine years. “It took a decade for me, really, to find closure on that chapter in my life,” he confesses. “I was convinced in dealing with the loss of my career and my whole identity as ‘the drummer in Maroon 5’ that the rest of my life was just going to be this big letdown, and that all I could really hope to do was try to self-medicate or otherwise find moments of pleasure that would pass the time and help me to escape from this feeling of disappointment and loss. The idea of finding actual purpose and meaning again, and a sense of contentment and fulfillment, wasn’t even on the menu for me.”
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Read the whole lengthy interview here:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/original-maroon-5-drummer-ryan-dusick-addiction-recovery-after-being-fired-215744945.html
The original interview was edited for brevity and clarity; COMBO shortened it for space purposes.
Photo: Ryan Michael Dusick | https://www.facebook.com/ryan.m.dusick/
Original Maroon 5 Drummer Ryan Dusick on Addiction, Recovery After Being Fired From Band
