Interpol's Paul Banks Opens Up About His Sobriety

Interpol's Paul Banks got candid about his past during a recent interview with Rolling Stone.

The frontman discussed his former party lifestyle and how that was reflected in his music. "It worked. It worked then," he admitted. "But I think if there’s a question of like, should one hold on to that as they continue as an artist I feel like, I think I’d rather be alive than dead."

The indie rocker is sober now. Well, mostly. "I don’t drink, and I don’t do anything that isn’t sort of green and grows," he confessed.

"I remember clearly feeling like what was starting to happen, where it was clearly to me starting to impact what I believed my potential to be," he said, recalling when he decided to get sober. "Whereas, in the early days I felt like either the lifestyle hadn’t caught up to me, or I was just so young and full of it that I could handle it all."

But that mindset changed as the 40-year-old singer/guitarist got older. "I realized that it was just going to choke everything out, and then there’d be nothing left," he divulged, before adding another reason to change his lifestyle. "I also kind of feel like it’s a cooler look to be my age and sober than my age and fucked up."

Interpol's latest album Marauder shows that Banks' cool factor definitely hasn't waned with age. The band is currently on a world tour and will be on the road through early next year.

Read Paul Banks' full Rolling Stone interview here.

Photo: Getty Images