Matt Sorum to Detail Drug-Smuggling Past in New Autobiography
Most rock star memoirs don't get to the good stuff until the story reaches their rise to fame. Former Guns N' Roses drummer Matt Sorum, on the other hand, has made it sound like his upcoming autobiography will represent a fairly wild break from tradition.
Sorum, speaking with media personality Matt Pinfield on the latter's 2 Hours With Matt Pinfield podcast, promised to deliver "the juiciest of the juiciest" of memoirs written by Guns N' Roses vets — and he made it clear he has a lifetime of stories that go back years before there was even any such thing as GNR. In the segment, which you can hear below, he offered a particularly revealing anecdote about his life before stardom, claiming to have once made an extremely dangerous living before making a fateful decision.
"Before I was in a rock band, I was a drug smuggler. I used to smuggle cocaine across borders," said Sorum. "I'd fly on airplanes with two kilos strapped around my waist."
Adding that he thought about calling his book Rock 'n' Roll Smuggler, Sorum went on to say that the majority of his deliveries happened in Hawaii — which is where he was when he decided he needed to get out of the business. As Sorum tells the story, he made his move out of the drug trade just in time.
"The last time I smuggled two kilos to Hawaii, I remember thinking I was being followed, and it wasn't because I was paranoid on cocaine — I really felt that I was being followed," said Sorum. "I told the guy that flew this stuff for — I was the mule, and I got, like, a couple grand every time I went — 'I can't do this. I'm being followed.' He's like, 'Oh, man, you're just high.' I'm like, 'No, man. I'm not doing it. I'm going back to L.A.' The guy that took my place got arrested. Twenty years in a federal penitentiary, international drug smuggling. That would have been me."