Darius Rucker talks family trauma, drug use and fate: 'The best revenge is success'
As the molasses-voiced frontman for Hootie & the Blowfish, Darius Rucker sold 21 million albums of the band’s debut, “Cracked Rear View,” shared mics with Frank Sinatra and Adele and ingested copious amounts of alcohol and drugs.
It was, for many years in mid-‘90s, the epitome of stereotypical rock star living as the band blossomed from college dorm upstarts barely given a chance to arena-packing everymen ruling radio with “Hold My Hand” and “Let Her Cry.”
Rucker, 58, even got his sports idol Dan Marino of his beloved Miami Dolphins to star in Hootie’s lighthearted video for “Only Wanna Be With You.”
“He’s the greatest quarterback to ever play in the game. Fight Me,” Rucker says with a smile during a recent chat.
His devotion to the Dolphins, KISS, Barry Manilow and music in general is celebrated through his talent for effortless conversation in “Life’s Too Short: A Memoir” (HarperCollins, 242 pp.), out now.
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Darius Rucker doesn’t shy from painful memories
But his book, which he worked on for a year and a half with author Alan Eisenstock and chronicles not only his Hootie highs but his successful shift to country music, also digs into family strife.
The sudden death of his older brother, Ricky, who died from an accident while intoxicated when Rucker was a kid. The pain of a neglectful father who appeared sparingly during his youth, then disappeared for 15 years until resurfacing during Hootie success to ask for money to buy a car. The death of his beloved mother, Carolyn, in 1992 (Rucker named his 2023 country album “Carolyn’s Boy” as a tribute).
“I laugh and say, ‘My therapist got a lot of work after I wrote the book,’” Rucker says. “Because the trauma, you just don’t deal with. You don’t think about it because you’re grown up and you’ve got kids and bills and bills and kids. When I started writing about it, it all came back and (I realized), wow, I need to deal with that stuff because it really affected me a lot more than I thought it did.”
Darius Rucker is a firm believer in fate
Rucker’s memories – the painful and the ecstatic – are recounted in chapters introduced by song titles: Billy Joel’s “Honesty” for his eventual pairing with guitarist Mark Bryan and their discussions about forming a band; "Ships" from Barry Manilow about his passing-in-the-night relationship with his father; “So. Central Rain” from one of Hootie & the Blowfish’s biggest inspirations, R.E.M., in the chapter about Rucker meeting bassist Dean Felber, who became a soulmate as well as a bandmate. (“We share a sort of oneness,” Rucker writes. “Dean and I are two halves of a whole. … He is the brother I have always wanted.”)
Rucker said that with every memory he recounted – and all of his stories in the book are from recall, not journals – “there was some song that came back to me.”
The true formation of Hootie & the Blowfish was built on destiny. Rucker was set to depart University of South Carolina after a year of feeling lost and depressed when a few days before the end of the semester, he made a friend in fellow student Chris Carney.
The two hit it off so quickly that Rucker decided to remain at school. Had he left as planned, there would be no meeting Bryan Felber and, eventually, drummer Jim “Soni” Sonefeld, and thus, no Hootie.
Carney is currently Rucker’s business manager – “He runs my life!” – and Rucker remains a firm believer in fate.
“I think the universe brought Hootie & the Blowfish together,” he says. “If you look at all of our stories … Soni went to South Carolina because they were the only school to give him a soccer scholarship. Why? I don’t know, but he got one. Mark wanted to go to James Madison University but couldn’t get in, so he went to South Carolina. Dean was supposed to go to Elon University on a scholarship and decided last minute to go to South Carolina. If I leave, Hootie never happens. Probably if any of those guys leave, Hootie never happens. So I believe in fate, and the universe, a lot.”
The nonstop party that was Hootie & the Blowfish: ‘Whatever you got, I’m in’
Many tales in the book are accompanied by candid acknowledgement of drug use.
“The party never stops,” Rucker writes. “Whatever you got, I’m in.”
Mushrooms. Ecstasy. Cocaine.
“When do we partake? Day, evening, night, into the next day, always. Nonstop,” he writes after an anecdote about handing over a bag of $30,000 cash to a drug dealer.
Rucker now says he’s been out of the cycle of heavy drug use for 20 years – a mandate from his ex-wife, Beth Leonard, who is mother to two of his children, Daniella, 23, and Jack, 19. (Rucker was arrested in Tennessee in February for two counts of possession of marijuana and Psilocyn stemming from an incident in 2023 when he was pulled over for having an expired license plate.)
“When Beth told me to stop, I stopped and said, ‘I’m not doing it anymore.’ And I was lucky to be able to do that," Rucker says. "I was lucky to not have to go to rehab and all of the stuff that you usually have to do to end that. But it was just time for me to grow up. … If somebody offered me something like that (now), I would ask, ‘What is wrong with you, man?’ Those days are long gone.”
Darius Rucker thrives in country music: 'The best revenge is success'
As Hootie & the Blowfish “came to the end” – but not a breakup, as they returned to touring in 2019 and will be back on the road this summer with Collective Soul and Edwin McCain – Rucker decided he was going to Nashville, Tennessee.
Much like the early Hootie years, his attempts at infiltrating the country cliques that dominated the city were initially met with indifference. As a Black man trying to break through, even with his name recognition, the challenges were amplified.
Rucker essentially returned to his troubadour roots, visiting hundreds of radio stations and merely asking that his single “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It” got a shot at the rotation.
He wound up with a No. 1 hit and a thriving country career that included an invitation into the Grand Ole Opry in 2012 as only – and still – the second Black artist inducted.
Rucker says he hopes that his success has nudged the industry into wider acceptance.
“When I came in, none of us had a chance. And to go in there and prove that wrong was huge,” he says. “I always say the best revenge is success. So you just put your head down, and work. That's what I've always done. That's what Hootie did. You don't have to talk. You just do it, and you live it.”