BRITISH GUITARIST BILLY
Morrison estimates that he wasted a good 15 years of his life shooting drugs. “I loved the Sex Pistols and Johnny Thunders, and I went down that route,” he says. “But most people get the music career first and then blow their money on drugs. I did it backward.”
By the mid ’90s, Morrison was facing the end. He weighed 120 pounds and was homeless. He’d been stabbed and no one seemed to care. Even his friends had abandoned him. One night, he found himself crouching behind a garbage can in London, trying to shoot heroin into collapsed veins. “That’s when I finally saw the light,” he says. “I said, ‘I’m done with this. I’m going to get clean and have the career I always wanted in music.’”
He had played a bit of guitar in bands as a teenager, but at the age of 29 he decided to get serious. Becoming a virtuoso shredder was the last thing on his mind, but he loved rhythm guitar and set out to make his right hand one of the best around. “Listen to AC/DC
and tell me Malcolm Young didn’t drive that band,” he says. “Same with the Sex Pistols. It’s all about Steve Jones’ rhythm playing. Those guys are tone merchants. That’s the club I wanted to be in.”
Things turned around quickly — until they didn’t. Morrison formed a
