Ryan Adams on The Strokes, “I should’ve forced them to get addicted to writing better songs”

Ryan Adams vs The Strokes

In the book Meet Me in the Bathroom, Strokes’ Albert Hammond Jr paints Ryan Adams as a bad influence on his life.

Hammond Jr’s Comment in Meet Me in the Bathroom

Ryan would always come and wake me at two in the morning and have drugs, so I’d just do the drugs and kind of numb out…I knew I would shoot up drugs from a very young age. I’d been wanting to do heroin since I was 14 years old.”

Ryan Adams responds:

Hammond is a more horrible songwriter than his dad. If that’s possible. It rains in CA & washes out the dirt As you were”

The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas on wanting to beat Adams up:

Did I specifically tell Ryan to stay away from Albert? I can’t remember the details, to be honest,” Casablancas said. “I think heroin just kind of crosses a line. It can take a person’s soul away. So it’s like if someone is trying to give your friend a lobotomy — you’re gonna step in.”

Adams’ response:

Julian Casablancas: who got you strung out on lasagna tho?”

All that noise is coming from a former fan – Adams once recorded his own version of the Strokes’ debut LP Is This It.

Ryan continues to stoke the fire:

Last Impressions of Actual Songs,” Adams tweeted, (referring to The Strokes’ First Impressions of Earth) “I should’ve forced them to get addicted to writing better songs. Too bad @thekillers did it for them.”

In Meet Me in the Bathroom, Adams said he felt like he was the scapegoat for Hammond Jr.’s addiction issues:

That’s so sad, because Albert and I were friends. If anything, I really felt like I had an eye on him in a way that they never did,” Adams said. “I loved him so deeply. I would never ever have given him a bag of heroin. I remember being incredibly worried about him, even after I continued to do speedballs. It was easy to brand me as the problem. I would suspect that they soon learned that I was not the problem.”