The Streets' Mike Skinner: "It’s not cool to be 40, in a nightclub, getting off your face" - News - Mixmag
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The Streets' Mike Skinner: "It’s not cool to be 40, in a nightclub, getting off your face"

The Streets artist talks about touring, mental health and more

  • Dave Turner
  • 16 March 2020
The Streets' Mike Skinner: "It’s not cool to be 40, in a nightclub, getting off your face"

There, The Streets' Mike Skinner has said it: "It’s not cool to be 40, in a nightclub, getting off your face."

The Streets frontman was recently interviewed by the Guardian, in which he was asked whether he still indulges in hedonism while on tour.

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Skinner answered the question in characteristically playful fashion: “With touring, you control everything, so it’s very easy to do whatever you want. If you want to take smack, play with animals and paint the dressing room every night then that’s fine – you just need to cut a cheque. It’s also very easy to not do that, and find a routine where it’s carrot juice and turmeric lattes every night rather than straight-up madness."

However, Skinner, who has a mixtape as The Streets out soon, said that he finds it harder to behave when DJing, rather than playing live. "With DJing, it’s not your world you’re walking into, it’s whatever that promoter and that town have created. So you’re hoping it doesn’t go left because it’s not cool to be 40, in a nightclub, getting off your face. But it happens.”

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Skinner, who said in 2018 he can get "suicidal or something" if he's not creative, also discussed the perils of fame on mental health: "I don’t generally have a lot of sympathy for celebrities because you can always not walk into the fire. But if you do, then you are absolutely taking a gamble with your mental health. And it’s a traumatic thing, to be very young and very famous. Not like some traumas, but it’s … I guess it’s a bit like winning the lottery. It doesn’t usually end well."

Avid Streets fans will be please to hear he's working on a film about The Streets, which is based on "this idea of a DJ as a sort of cynical or disillusioned private detective."

Read the interview in full here.

Dave Turner is Mixmag's Commercial Content Editor, follow him on Twitter

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