Keith Urban has been proudly sober since 2006, when he entered the Betty Ford Center to overcome his addictions, once and for all. For Urban, his time in treatment was transformative, not only for himself, but in how he viewed his father, also an addict.
“What helped me most in recovery was being able to separate the addict from the person,” Urban tells Addict with Purpose. “And my dad as a person was amazing. But he was an addict. So his addict was not nice, not good, not a good way to be raised.”
Urban touched on his father’s alcoholism in “Break the Chain,” the final song on Urban’s latest HIGH album. Urban penned the song with Marc Scibilia.
“I went and sat on his couch, and I got a legal pad out cause I like to write, and I’m writing,” Urban remembers. “I get to this second verse, and I just start weeping on this guy’s couch, just crying on this guy’s couch, who I’ve just met. He looks over at me and he goes, ‘Must be true.’ And then went right back to work. And it was the perfect reaction, because it let me stay in the place I was at with no judgment, and I could finish the song. And then I got on the mic and I sang it top to bottom and then did some harmonies and everything just went quickly.
“I didn’t second guess it,” he continues. “I just did it. He sent me the track the next day, pieced together, and I just said, ‘I think we should leave this one alone. I think this is real. I’m not going to go and track it with the band on a proper session and all this BS. We’re just going to leave it like that.’”
Urban’s father passed away in 2015. Because Urban’s addictions looked much different than his father’s, the New Zealand native admits it took him a while to recognize that he too needed help.
“It took me a long time to get sober,” Urban tells Rolling Stone. “Took me a long time to recognize my alcoholism. A long time because I didn’t drink like my dad, so I compared everything to him. So it just took a long time for me. But I was able to finally make the right choice in my life that I wish my dad would have made.”
Urban now sees how much his father’s addiction impacted his whole life, and in many ways still impacts him today.
“My dad was an alcoholic,” Urban tells EMi Music Australia. “So I’m raised in an alcoholic house with all the stuff that comes with that. And I love my dad; I love my family. But it was a challenging environment to be in, and not something I realized until I was much older, and I’d left home. I realized I’m carrying around the same kinds of ways of being, because it works in that environment. Suddenly I’m out in the world, I’m not in that environment, but I’m still doing the same things, and wondering why everything is just off. And then of course I find out that I’m alcoholically wired, just like my dad. Took me years to see that.”
It took Urban being married to his wife, Nicole Kidman, and becoming a father to their two daughters, which made Urban fully aware of how much his father’s alcoholism affected every aspect of his life.
“I realized I’m like my dad,” Urban says. “And I can either keep doing that with this new family I’ve got, and just say, ‘Well it’s not my fault. Blame my dad. I was born into that, didn’t choose that, didn’t have any choice. I was born into that, and now I’ve got this. Oh well.’ Or, I can break the chain, and do it different. And so, I tried very hard, and I’m trying very hard to do that differently.”
Urban will embark on his High and Alive World Tour in May. Find all of Urban’s music and upcoming shows at KeithUrban.com.