Fatboy Slim said he felt paralyzed and “numb with fear” at the prospect of DJing sober after spending time in rehab to deal with his alcohol addiction.
The artist, whose real name is Norman Cook, described his alcoholism as a parasite and said getting sober was “probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done” during an appearance on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs with Lauren Laverne.
He said he was inspired to address his problem after his then-wife, radio DJ Zoe Ball, said she would leave him unless he stopped drinking. “That was my awakening moment. A lot of people used to shout at me, but in the end everyone was whispering very quietly.
“Addiction is such a strange disease and it’s like a parasite, it protects itself. It knows that if you leave it, it won’t have anywhere else to live, so it will do anything to you to keep you.
โThat was probably my last year of drinking, I wasnโt really enjoying it and things in my life started to go downhill.โ
He entered rehab in 2009 and has been sober for almost 15 years since then. According to him, while in a rehabilitation center, he realized that he asked for help โjust in time.โ
Asked if it was easy for him to quit smoking, he replied: “No, absolutely not. It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done… I couldn’t have done it without going to rehab. I needed someone to beat me over the head for a month. You know, ‘you’re going to die and be miserable if you don’t stop doing this.’
He said the anxiety he felt about returning to the stage to perform sober took some time to subside. “For the first five performances, I was so paralyzed and paralyzed with fear that I couldn’t dance and couldn’t enjoy it. I thought, ‘What are you really doing?’ Why are you going to play this record next time? And why will they react to it?”
He said the “beautiful night in Japan” helped him overcome his fears as the crowd was “just really excited” and he realized it was his job to make the crowd happy. โEverything just kind of fell into place,โ he said.
Performing with the Housemartins alongside Paul Heaton, who would go on to form Beautiful South, Cook rose to fame as Fatboy Slim in the 1990s. He released a string of club hits including Praise You, The Rockafeller Skank and Right Here, Right Now.
He received six Grammy nominations and won the award for best music video in 2002 for Weapon of Choice, in which Hollywood actor Christopher Walken dances in a deserted hotel lobby.
The full episode of Desert Island Discs can be heard on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4 from Sunday at 10am.