to be an aging rockstar

You start out playing shitty club gigs and you get high because you want to feel good after being stuck in the back seat of a packed van, and you are a little nervous and you want to feel as bad ass as your stage act says you're supposed to be. And you know it's a persona but the only fun you have is believing the persona for a few hours, and the combination of all these things makes you an addict by the time anyone gives fuck who you are. But the wife or the money or the management figures out how to clean you up before you die and just in time to lock in some earnings from your one chart hit and book you on Letterman once in a while and you show up and your rider requests a sober wet bar and you're standing there under halogen lights talking to their handler and knowing you're supposed to pretend that you're the persona and that the persona thinks all this is really cool and the persona likes a sober wet bar in an undecorated green room under halogen lights, and if you happen to have a brain after all of the years on the road this has to be fucking hell.