Article:Dominic Chad - The rock 'n' roll Excesses

This article/page originated from the Saint Chads for the terminally helpless site

The rockenroll excesses

Chad was apparently always very introverted and unsociable until he moved to university and basically discovered the joys of going out, so much so that he was kicked off his course (French and Russian at Bangor University) because he just spent all his time in the bar and didn't really do any work.

After that he drifted to Chester and worked at the Fat Cat pub at the edge the town centre - nice food - and eventually became manager. That's where he met the others.

What he didn't know was that he had an allergy to alcohol, which made him go mad whenever he drank. And he used to drink a lot - in his words he wasn't sober for a lot of 6 to 8 years, because he wasn't particularly happy at college so would drink to make things seem happy. It became a bit of a habit - to the degree that a lot of Mansun's early records were recorded with him sitting down because he just couldn't stand.

Whilst incapacitated he apparently managed to:

Do all of a year's work for his degree on the last night before it had to be handed in.

Get kicked off his Russian course for lack of effort.

"My daily routine was get up at three, go down to the Union bar at four and stay there until it shut".

Wake up with hypothermia after falling asleep on the pavement outside a party.

Get mashed on cough medicine with Paul, then wake up with "Chad" carved into his back in glass.

Grow a "huge beard with plaits in it" and grow his hair "down to his arse"

Get run over by a parked car...

Fall off a ladder and break his arm - possibly the same incident as the NME refer to as "bare-body dive-bombing of Tarmac from roofs".

Change all the decorations in the corridors of the Embassy hotel, London. (Jul '95)

Get banned (for fighting with an Australian) from staying at the Columbia hotel, while staying at the Embassy hotel.

Attempt to stop all the traffic get into Chester across the bridge into town. This stopped when he was beaten up by an angry driver. (Jul '95)

Refuse to remove his sunglasses for most of his waking life, on and offstage.

When Tim Burgess kept calling his hotel room, pretending to be the manager and asking him to keep the noise down, Chad stormed down to the reception and "decked this bloke across the counter".(Aug '95)

Get kicked out of the Sheffield Leadmill after throwing pint glasses at the mirrored walls. Then... (Nov '95)

Get beaten up outside the Sheffield Leadmill for kicking taxis. (Nov '95)

Wake up on the steps outside the old [[[EMI]] building in London after an NME BRATS gig having forgotten which hotel he was supposed to ask the taxi driver to go to. Or where Parlophone had moved to.(Jan '96)

Go missing for 4 days after the NME BRATS gig. (Jan '96)

Make Mark, the ex-samples man leave the band a paranoid wreck - he couldn't keep up with Chad's desire to party constantly. (Jan '96)

Throw a TV out of a Norwich hotel window. Along with two lamps. (Feb '96)

Hold a chair over his head to protect himself from "the mad man throwing things around". (Feb '96)

Make every other hotel guest on that floor leave and move in to a different hotel. (Feb '96)

Have a member of Cast throw a potato at him to see if he'll respond. (Mar '96)

To quote Stove, "I mean, just look at Chad, he's smashed up every guitar he's ever owned, he runs up huge hotel bills, and gets his head kicked in almost every week! He's completely self-destructive, but he's such a fantastic guitarist, he's irreplaceable." (Mar '96)

Drop-kicked a statue of the Venus de Milo in the Holiday Inn in Cambridge, doing over £3000 worth of damage. (Apr '96)

"Mansun have parted company with drummer Hib after a bizarre fruit-flinging incident, which reportedly formed the juicy conclusion to a series of rows between Hib and guitarist Chad. Singer Paul Draper last week told the sorry story in an interview with The Maker's Ian Watson. Paul explained: 'He [Hib] couldn't stop fighting with Chad. He thew a pinapple in Chad's face in Cambridge, and that was the last straw. He just had to go.' " (April '96)

Sever a tendon in his right hand when recreating the film Taxi Driver and putting his hand through the mirror... though Paul said this happened in a guitar-related incident.(Summer '96)

Sit down at the hotel bar with a vodka and tonic at 8pm, drink till 11am then go to the gym, "and that’s where Paul found him, out of his head, pedalling furiously on an exercise bike".(Jan '97)

Go to the Marshall warehouse to get a new amplifier, sit down to try it out and not remember how to play a single note.(Jan '97)

That was apparently the last time alcohol passed his lips. When this happened, they realised that they really needed to sort it all out. Chad became teetotal (going to Wednesday night meets at the Chester AA), because the music press were already saying he'd be the next to leave (then Stove, then Paul would have an argument with himself and leave), and by September the NME report shows that he was getting on the straight and narrow:

Then, from the backstage lavatory, comes a rumbling. Enter Chad, the hedonistic heart of Mansun. Heart-throb to legions of girl fans the length and breadth of the country, and official Maddest Guitarist In Existence. He whips off his shirt, wrings a stream of sweat from it and glares avidly around the room. He has a need, a desperate need. "For Christ's sake!" he groans. "Where's my fucking mineral water?"