00:00 Introducing CJ Wildheart and his tinnitus experience

Sean: Hello everyone, and welcome to Tinnitus Talk, a podcast on all things tinnitus. My name is Sean and today we have a special guest on our podcast, CJ Wildheart. He’s been a professional musician for over 30 years, played in several bands and formed the band ’’ back in 1989. Ed, also known as ‘Ed209’ on the Tinnitus Talk Support Forum had the chance to interview him about his tinnitus, which he speaks about very candidly.

Before we continue to the interview, let me just remind you that we are creating this Podcast with a small group of volunteers. If you’re interested in volunteering for us, do let us know. It’s a great way to do something meaningful for the tinnitus cause and we are always seeking new people to help out. You can help out behind the scenes with this Podcast. We also have other projects going on, like maintaining the Tinnitus Talk Support Forum, promoting educational content for tinnitus patients, running awareness-raising campaigns, writing media articles and taking part in research projects like survey design and data analysis. There are many different skills that we can also use so if you are interested, please send an email to [email protected]

Sean: Now, without further ado, let’s listen to the interview.

Eddie: Hi everyone, and welcome to the Tinnitus Talk Podcast. My name’s Eddie Clarke and it’s with great pleasure that I can introduce today’s guest, CJ Wildheart. How are you CJ?

CJ: I’m alright - I can’t hear anything, the ringing’s too loud!

Eddie: So, we’ve just had a bit of a discussion off air, so it’s obvious that CJ’s got tinnitus, so we’ll get right into it. First of all, can you tell us about your history a bit more so for people who don’t know who you are, can you tell us about your background?

CJ: Right, well I’m 51 and I’ve been a professional musician since I was about 18 and playing in bands since I was about 15. I’ve had quite a long career and I play in a rock band called The Wildhearts and we’re very loud and very noisy and for many, many decades I didn’t really look after my ears.

Eddie: I’ll just add to that. I’m a huge fan of The Wildhearts. I’ve been to loads of the gigs; probably about ten gigs or something like that, but there’s always been a bit of a jinx as well with your band as there have always been incidents. The first time I bought a ticket you split up, so I never even got to see you. That was in the 90’s.

CJ: We split up a few times….

Eddie: Yes, I was really looking forward to it. So, fast forward about five or seven years then you were playing a gig at JB’s in Dudley. I think this was an infamous one. Something happened with Danny which I can’t really repeat on air.

CJ: Oh, we sacked him onstage, didn’t we? And we kicked him out. It was pretty bad!

Eddie: The guy from Anti Product, the bass player? He took over and did a few songs and that was my first experience of The Wildhearts. I was like ‘Ok, so that’s the live vibe’. So from there on it’s all been sweet. I suppose the first question is, can you explain what your tinnitus sounds like? Or what you hear? Go into that a little more?

CJ: Right, so I’ve always, well for 20 years, I only wore one, squidgy-like earplug on stage and that was mainly for pitching my vocals and also to isolate one side of my head away from the rest of the band so I could hear my guitar better and that caused a real battering to my right ear. I mean, it started off as a ring, like an intense ringing that would eventually never, ever go. I used to do a lot more gigs than I do now and I noticed the more I toured and the more gigs I played the ringing would start metamorphosing into some sort of weird radio signal, go up and down and sort of weird wind sounds. 04:05 Coping, self-medication and proper hearing protection

CJ: It would keep me up but I play in a rock and roll band so I would self-medicate.

Eddie: Yes, that’s quite common!

CJ: I could wake up……

Eddie: Yes, I hear this a lot….

CJ: I could go to sleep whenever I wanted to go to sleep. So, I didn’t have a problem. I mean I didn’t have to wake up and do a shift at a factory or work in the office so, you know, being a professional musician, being on tour, you know I could wake up at 12 or 1 in the afternoon and I could go to bed at 6 AM and we were always partying. There was always a lot of noise. It was only when it was dead quiet when you’d really, really notice it and, you know, I’d take something and go to sleep, and so it wasn’t a problem until I stopped doing drugs and stopped partying and I surrounded myself with solitude and silence because of how noisy my job is. That’s when it became a major issue and I realised I had to do something about it or I wouldn’t be able to play live any more. So, the step I took…

Eddie: So, what did you do?

CJ: Well it was advice from my drummer. He’s always looked after his ears and he uses attenuators and uses moulds and he told me to buy some random, cheap pair and I found some for about £30 online and I tried them out and, at first, I was just using one squidgy plug and one attenuator. Now I use both attenuators and I use them on the frequency which basically has filters in them and they knock everything down quite a lot and it protects your ears, but you can hear everything. It took me a while to get used to them but the ringing is nowhere near as bad as it used to be. You know there’s a lot of science gone into these things and you really should use them. You should really protect your ears and they do work. You know, I have friends who can’t play any more because it’s so bad for them and I’ve never reached that point and when it was really bad for me I could self-medicate. It didn’t become a problem. It wasn’t ruining my life or ruling it. 06:14 Tinnitus awareness in the music industry and related technological trends

“You know that whole thing of all men play on 10? Well, no they don’t, all men play on about 0.5 now”

Eddie: The next question was going to be: did you ever speak to any other musicians about it? Is it something that is openly discussed in your opinion or is it something that’s not really talked about?

CJ: No it is, it is….

Eddie: Because from the outside looking in, a lot of people don’t really see what goes on in the professional music world. It’s very sort of insular and tinnitus does get mentioned every now and again but not in any kind of serious detail and there are people in the community that I am representing now who are literally suicidal with this. It’s taken over their life and it’s completely devastated them and sometimes you’ll see an article that will just say ‘oh, you know, this guy’s got ringing’ and it doesn’t really go into the detail of what it can do to some people.

CJ: I mean, it depresses you when it’s really bad. It can really make you down because, I mean, it’s constant. It’s not something that goes away, but musicians talk about this. I mean we’re old school musicians, we’re an old school rock and roll band and, remember, most musicians these days are using in-ear monitors so they don’t get … and a lot of bands don’t even have amps on stage any more. They don’t have the physical volume.

Ed: The back line has changed, hasn’t it? A lot of digital….

CJ: Yeah, a lot. It’s silence now, they’re in silence. All you’re hearing is drums and they’re all on in-ears so things are changing. I think you know amongst a lot of professional musicians it isn’t such a problem as it used to be. You know the whole way of performing music has changed. We don’t use it and you know it’s something we’ve looked into but we’re still old school. People talk about… I know just about every old musician or rock and roll musician I know has this to varying degrees and, as I said, some of my friends have had to give up. But a lot of people just live with it.

Eddie: One guy, Paul Gray, I don’t know if you know the bass player from The Damned, he quit for about 20 something years because he literally said he couldn’t get out of the house because he couldn’t stand any noise.

CJ: Yeah, I know how that feels because I crave solitude, peace and quiet. I don’t go and see bands now as a punter.

Eddie: You moved to the countryside, didn’t you? Are you still in Yorkshire?

CJ: Yeah, I’m in Harrogate. It’s not really the countryside.

Eddie: It’s semi-rural. Half way there…

CJ: I can drive for ten minutes and I’m in the middle of nowhere. People are covered in mud and making love to sheep. It’s alright here. I haven’t been run out of town yet. It’s ok. I crave peace and quiet and because I do look after my ears, things are under control. I mean, when it was really bad - I mean if you had a joint or something, it would be the worst - you’d tune into this sound and I mean it’s like a form of torture.

Eddie: It can take over at that point can’t it? I’ve felt that.

CJ: There are lots of things you can do to make it better, and if you’re like me where it wasn’t to the point of say, someone like Paul Gray, if you start wearing plugs, you know, start looking after your ears turn down on stage! You know that whole thing of all men play on 10, well no they don’t, all men play on about 0.5 now.

Eddie: Yeah, I do. That’s literally the way it’s going. Big Mick, the guy who used to manage you, I think? He’s ’s sound engineer?

CJ: Yeah, well, he managed us and he used to do our sound but off and on over the last, God, 25/26 years.

Eddie: ‘Cos I watched a video on YouTube and he was talking about the trend in music now because he was setting up a Metallica gig somewhere Europe. I can’t remember which country it was in. But he was talking about, he reckons in the future they won’t even have speakers, in his opinion. He was talking about they’ll have these concert ear plug things they’ll be handing out and it will be like a wi-fi frequency feeding everybody the sound and then they can have it any volume they want. That’s what he predicts.

CJ: Yeah, Mick’s pretty right about these sorts of things. I mean I’ve had conversations with him over the years and I’ve known him for 30 years. And when he’s been out on tour with us and sound companies are giving him cutting-edge stuff to use and try out and it’s the next generation of tools for sound guys and for, you know, PA companies. But I think it was Mick who told me to use a plug in one ear to help with the pitching all those years ago. So, yeah, I’m gonna sue Metallica, I think!

Eddie: Well, they’ve got enough money. I think it will cover that!

CJ: Yeah, they guard their money with their lives, that lot! 11:06 Lifestyle changes and protecting his ears

Eddie: So, another question, which has probably already been answered in some respects. This is from a bass player on the Forum. And he’s gutted because he’s had to quit his band and he wanted to know: how do you keep your peace of mind whilst still playing live? So, when you’re in the moment and you’re playing live, is it ever on your mind that this shit can get real. You know, in the morning are you thinking, ‘this could be a problem’ or are you beyond that now?

CJ: Yeah, I mean, with the plugs I wear now, you know they’ve improved everything by at least, I reckon, 75%. If we stop talking now, I can hear it. But you know, we’re talking now. I mean I listen to a lot of music. I can’t sleep unless I’m listening to music or audio books and stuff so if I’m listening to someone talking or someone telling me a story or gentle music, I’ll drift off to sleep and it isn’t a problem and as I also said earlier, I don’t go and see bands as a punter because I protect my ears basically and I only expose myself…..

Eddie: That’s actually one of the questions,…

CJ: I expose myself to loud sounds….. my attitude is: If I’m going to expose myself to loud noise, I need to get paid for it! And that’s the only time I expose my ears to loud noises is when I know I’m getting paid for it and I treat it like a job. You know it’s like a soldier goes to war and he has to dodge bullets. Well, I have to dodge sound in the best possible way.

Eddie: Yes, that’s a good analogy actually because there are a lot of people in the military who have tinnitus as well. Obviously with the noise they get exposed to.

CJ: They do.

Eddie: Yes, that probably answers one of the other questions that was really common that everybody wanted me to ask you and that was, if you go somewhere loud do you wear earplugs? So, if it’s not like a concert but like a loud bar. But I suppose you don’t really go to these places any more based on what you’ve just said?

CJ: Well no, I don’t. You know I’m 51. I’m not going to nightclubs and hanging out with kids and stuff. I mean nightclubs at 51! I’m not a normal 51-year-old. I mean, I don’t want to go out to a club and listen to Level 42 you know.

Eddie: Ok, the other thing was do you have any hyperacusis? That was another question. So if you hear a sound does it cause you any pain in your ears? Which is something that Paul Gray had quite badly actually, which is one of the reasons why he quit.

CJ: Yeah, Ed Sheeran, that causes me a bit of pain when I hear Ed Sheeran singing and Florence and the Machine and, who else? Oh God, Adele, kills me! Is that what you meant?

Eddie: Well, that’s one aspect of it, as long as it’s making some kind of noise. Yeah, for sure.

CJ: They cause me a lot of pain for some weird reason. Oh, and Jess Glynne. This is like God’s honest truth. Jess Glynne has a frequency in her voice that hurts my teeth. You know, when you feel like your fillings are rattling?

Eddie: Yeah, yeah, I know that feeling. When my daughter screams that happens. CJ: Yes, it’s similar to that, but Jess Glynne is the only singer who does that and whenever she comes on the radio, I have to turn her off and I thought it was just me but I’ve heard other people talking about it. She has some weird tonal thing going on and, yes, she hurts me. Jess Glynne, that’s the sound. Yes, it kills me. It’s true. I’m telling you.

Eddie: I believe you. The other thing was food. Does food affect the way you hear your tinnitus? Because for some people they reckon they can eat something and then it goes louder.

CJ: Really?

Eddie: And it bothers them a lot. Yes, absolutely. I was actually going to talk about your Chilli sauce, your Devilspit. Apparently, chilli sauce is one of the things. Now when I bought Mabel from the pledge thing that you set up a while back, I bought some of that Devilspit stuff. I don’t even eat hot sauce. I don’t know why I even bought it. I thought, I’ll give it a crack. ‘Cos it had beer in it or something so I thought that sounds alright I’ll have some of that and it absolutely blew a hole in the side of my head so you can see how weak I am. Cos that was a kind of a mild sauce really wasn’t it? It wasn’t like a hot, hot..

CJ: I don’t eat any of my sauces, they’re all mild for me. I put like reaper powder or scorpion powder and these are super, super hot chilli.

Eddie: It’s like the Carolina Reapers. They’re like the hottest ones aren’t they?

CJ: One of the hottest but it’s my favourite chilli, but I put spice in everything and I always have since I was about 11 or something. My parents, my mum was the same as well. Put spice on everything. I like it really hot. I get depressed if I don’t have spicy food. I’ve never seen any correlation between eating spicy food and sounds getting noisier in my head. Although I do hear voices when I have a really hot curry.

Eddie: It is quite rare so I wouldn’t imagine it’s on the common end of the spectrum but some people do report that certain foods have changed the sound that they hear.

I was going to talk about some of the charity work that you’ve done before. I know Ginger, in particular, has done a lot for mental health charity. Didn’t he sell his guitar for 17 grand or something like that before?

CJ: Yeah, it was auctioned but that was for the Japanese Tsunami Fund.

Eddie: Oh, ok, but there was some Samaritan work that he did as well if I remember correctly? I think he did a song called ‘Fuck You, Brain’.

CJ: Yes, yes…

Eddie: I think it was one of his solo……

CJ: Yeah, it was. I can’t remember what it was for, but it was for some charity. I don’t pay much attention to be honest with you. I mean, I very rarely listen to music as well. I listen to music in the car as I have more control over it, but the only time I tend to listen to music on headphones is when I’m mixing or recording and I try and limit hearing much music. So, some people think I’m not paying attention. It’s just that I’m protecting my - it’s an asset isn’t it? - being able to hear and being a musician are two really important things, so it’s really important, isn’t it?

Eddie: Yes, absolutely. So, day to day would you say it no longer bothers you, or it does bother you? You know, on an average day, do you really think about it much or is it just something in the background?

CJ: The minute it’s really, really quiet I think about it all the time, but because I’m protecting my ears now the ringing has subsided quite a lot, but it’s always there. It has to be completely peaceful and quiet and it’s at a level which I can stand. You know, I don’t actually mind it. You get used to it and I have got used to it and it hasn’t taken over my life so I don’t see it as a real problem any more.

Eddie: Because some of the members report that the noise is so loud that it’s like a jet engine or a train. You know, so something you can hear over any background noise and it doesn’t matter, you won’t cover it and it’s just prominent in their brain, 24/7. I think that is the extreme end of the spectrum.

CJ: Yeah, that’s torture. I mean I know I’ve damaged my ears but so have 99.9% of other musicians out there who’ve played as much as I have and toured. It’s just one of those things but as I said technology is changing now and I can’t see this being a major problem in the future. 18:35 Lemmy from Motörhead – his ear problems and playing style

There was one question that someone wanted me to ask. I don’t know if you ever met Lemmy? I know Ginger did.

CJ: Yeah, we toured with Motörhead.

Eddie: Did he mention his ears much? Did he ever talk about his tinnitus or did he never really bring it up?

CJ: No, no. He used to chop out wicked lines of speed. I mean we’ve all known Lemmy since the 80’s and we did quite a long tour with them quite a while back. I can’t remember when. Lemmy hated bass, believe it or not.

Eddie: Really? As a bass player?

CJ: On stage he had no bass and if you listen to his bass sound there’s hardly any bottom end on it and you look at his amps and there’s no bass on it and it’s so cutting and so meddly and trebly so yeah, it was really strange being a bass player and you know, he didn’t like bass. It got even more trebly as he got older and it that probably had something to do with his ears.

Eddie: It could have done. I’ve actually heard that from – I actually teach guitar – and one of my students told me he went to a Lemmy gig and said at the end he used to come back out and do his last piece solo or something and he said it was really trebly. It used to cut through. And he said it was a bizarre sort of sound.

CJ: Yeah, it’s really, really, trebly. He had such a distinctive sound and our bass player, Danny McCormack, he has touches of Lemmy in his sound and we actually made him, when he re- joined the band last year, we asked him to add a bit more bottom end to his sound man and myself and I think Ritchie as well and he complied and added a bit more bottom end to the sound but he has a touch of Lemmy in there. I think it’s because he only has one leg and he can’t hear properly! 20:35 The Wildhearts’ new album and trends in studio recording

“The whole recording process has changed (…) Those ridiculous volumes, that doesn’t happen anymore”

Eddie: Cool, right, so let’s talk a bit about the new album and do a bit of promotion. So, ‘Renaissance Men’, when’s it out?

CJ: It’s out May 3rd and it’s our first studio album in 10 years, believe it or not. So, it’s a really big deal for us because, you know, most bands don’t leave it for 10 years between albums but we’re a band who’ve had a lot of ups and downs. And we tend to have a lot of drama in this band and we’re volatile and sometimes we fall out. But we’re all on the same page now and we’re all getting on and we all really, really like our album, so I can’t wait for it to come out. I can’t wait to start touring.

Eddie: No, I can’t wait. I’m looking forward to the album. Really looking forward to it. The last one, ‘Chutzpah!’ I thought that was a great album as well.

CJ: Yeah!

Eddie: I can’t believe it’s been 10 years, since that came out - crazy!

CJ: Yeah, 2009 when ‘Chutzpah!’ came out. It’s 2019 now so it’s exactly 10 years…so it’s weird. It just doesn’t make any sense. I suppose we’re quite lucky that we have loyal fans, so they haven’t really disappeared, our fans, so we are lucky.

Eddie: So, when you are in the studio is there any different way that you record now because of tinnitus? Does that come into the equation, are you even thinking about that or is it not really a thing?

CJ: Yeah, everything has changed. The whole recording process has changed. You’re not standing by amps any more, like we used to do back in the day. You know a lot of the time we’d actually be in a live room just battering our ears with volume and we don’t do that anymore. When we used to listen back to mixes you’d hear them on huge speakers blaring at just ridiculous volumes. You know that doesn’t happen anymore. And you know if someone wants to listen to something loud I’ll leave the room, but it very rarely happens and everything, volume, everything, there is so much control over it these days. I think a lot of people forget you have a volume knob and you can actually turn things down. They don’t need to be played like blaring all the time. I think a lot of it is growing up.

Eddie: Yeah, it’s all pro-tools and that now as well. It’s all chopped and you just record it in sections and it’s very different to the 70’s way where you all stand in a room and record as one band. That hasn’t been done for years has it?

CJ: Yeah, thank God!

Eddie: That’s when the real musicians were around and you had to actually be seriously good.

CJ: We cut our teeth …. our first were all recorded on tape, you know and we all made lots of albums and recorded lots of songs on tape and I like technology and I like the way things are now and I would never want to go back to analogue. I’m not one of those older musicians harking back to how good it was in the 80’s; it sucked. I love the fact that kids can make music in their bedroom. If they know what they’re doing they can make great sounding, sonically great-sounding music and you don’t have to, like, suck corporate cock anymore and things have changed and there’s a little bit more power in the hands of musicians now. A lot more power in fact.

Eddie: For sure, for sure. Social media you can promote yourself. You go on YouTube, Facebook. As long as you can get a crowd to listen to you, follow your music. Make sure the music is good. Who needs a record label now, really?

CJ: Power to the people!

Eddie: That’s the one! Alright CJ, we’ll wrap it up there but thanks again for coming on. It’s an absolute pleasure to talk to you.

CJ: Yeah, it’s been a really nice..

Eddie: I’m a huge fan. I’ll be buying the album.

CJ: It’s been really good, really good. I didn’t know what to expect. I wish more interviews could be like this.

Eddie: Sweet. I like to just keep it light-hearted. Thanks a lot anyway.

CJ: Sweet, man.

Eddie: See you later man.

CJ: Alright, take care. Bye bye. 25.00 Start of part II: Ed’s experience with music, tinnitus onset and worsening

Sean: We hope you enjoyed our interview with CJ Wildheart. You might be interested to learn that Ed, who conducted the interview, is a musician himself. He still teaches music but had to give up performing because of his tinnitus. For our next segment I talked to him about this. We also discussed issues around noise exposure in general. How much is too much? And on the flip side of the coin, being overly avoiding of everyday sounds. As well as, of course, his impression of the CJ interview and tinnitus in the music scene.

Before we continue, we did want to take a quick moment to ask if you’re enjoying this episode so far, and to please consider donating. If you are willing to support us financially, even with just a few dollars, we will be able to reach even higher quality standards and we can, for instance, travel to interview the most interesting guests. You can find all the information about making donations on our Podcast page at www.tinnitustalk.com/podcast.

Sean: Today we have a very special guest. It’s also a fellow Forum member, Ed 209. Thank you for joining us Ed.

Eddie: No problem.

Sean: So, today we have a very interesting topic, regarding musicians and tinnitus. I know Ed is a musician. It’s something that he does in his daily life. He teaches guitar lessons, is that right?

Eddie: Yes, that’s correct. I teach guitar, I’ve been teaching for over 10 years now.

Sean: But you weren’t always just a guitar teacher?

Eddie: I’ve played in a few bands. I’ve performed live. So, it’s one of the big parts of my life.

Sean: Right, I was also - when I was younger - I was a musician too, but not in the sense that it was my livelihood. Tinnitus has definitely affected my ability to play music also in a sense. I mean we can get into that later.

Eddie: Yeah, for sure, for sure. I mean once you get tinnitus to the level that we’ve got it, obviously we’ve both got it pretty bad, then it totally does affect music. Especially if you are a live performer, there is no question. Unless you’re like some kind of mentally deranged person who just thinks it’s normal to have like a really loud siren and hissing noises and wind noises in your brain all day long, then yeah!

Sean: Sounds like Ozzy Osbourne or something like that.

Eddie: Yeah, for sure.

Sean: We’ll jump back to the beginning. So, when exactly did tinnitus become part of your life and how did it happen?

Eddie: Ok, good question….

Sean: If you want to talk about how it happened….?

Eddie: Yeah, for sure. So, when I was about 18, I remember I was in the gym with a good friend of mine and I remember hearing a noise, like a ringing noise and I thought, ‘ok, what’s that?’ It was a little bit concerning at the time. I knew what it was. I knew it was tinnitus because years before that there was a programme called Tomorrow’s World in the UK. It’s a science programme and there was a man on there, which always stayed in my memory, and he had really bad tinnitus, essentially. And they were talking about the treatments at the time and what tinnitus was and it kind of freaked me out and I thought, ‘I really hope I don’t get something like that, that sounds really bad’.

So, when I heard it in the gym, I thought this seems to be that tinnitus thing I saw on the tv years ago. I went home. I remember looking online but it was kind of in its infancy back then. The internet wasn’t what it is today. I remember looking at some really basic forums and I read a few posts and I kind of just put it to bed. It wasn’t really bad, but I never went down the rabbit hole at that point in time. It was there. I mean I could hear it while I was watching the tv, for example. It was what I consider mild, but it might be someone else’s moderate. I mean I don’t know what the scale is and nobody else does, to be honest. So, I could hear this ringing noise. I distinctly have memories of watching a movie that night. I think it was a Van Damme film where he is in prison or something. I mean it was a terrible movie. But all I have is a memory of having this ringing noise while I was watching it.

So, you fast forward a few months later. It’s still there but it’s not kind of on my mind. You know, it wasn’t affecting me mentally speaking but I had a lot of other stuff going on. A lot of other issues back then so it wasn’t a priority on my list, so to speak. Maybe that made a difference in how my brain kind of wired it up. I don’t know. I remember reading books at night, and it was there, in the background. Chris Martin came out around that time a few years later and that was the time when he said he had tinnitus. It was all over the news and stuff like that. I remember I was in the supermarket thinking I’ve still got that noise that he is talking about. But it was still there but I never really thought about it on a daily basis or anything like that.

So, that was when I was about 18 or 19 when all of this was kind of going on so, yes, I was still playing in live bands, I’m rehearsing. So, these rooms are really noisy, they’re small. They’re trying to save space. So, the rehearsal rooms are not the biggest in the first place. So, you know, you’re standing next to a drummer essentially with a cymbal next to your ear and a bass amp on the other ear. It’s like the size of a shoe box in there so there’s a lot of noise, a lot of resonant frequencies where the room would rattle, and your brain would be buzzing. When you look back it’s crazy really that I never put ear plugs in. Especially when I knew I already had a mild form of tinnitus but because it never bothered me. It’s a hard thing to describe, it just wasn’t really on my priority list. I never really saw it being a problem. I kind of just phased it out of my consciousness at the time.

So, you fast forward to the age of 32. It was a really heavy month of gigs. Going to gigs, watching bands, general noise basically. A week before the event that I blame for my tinnitus getting worse, I was at a live venue watching, I think there were three bands on that night. I was with a good friend of mine. A week after that was the event that I blame for my tinnitus getting worse. And I have to explain the acoustics in this place were really bad. There were brick walls everywhere. There’s nothing to dampen the sound. So, it was very, very reflective. I was right at the front which is even worse. It’s only a small place. It’s a bar, basically and the band were just really loud. 31.29 The guilt factor of hurting your ears

“It’s an intense feeling for some people, the anxiety and guilt that they feel for causing that on themselves”

Eddie: And I remember thinking at the time, and this is where the guilt factor comes in, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘I really should step outside for a moment because this is really hurting my ears’ and I’m looking round and scanning the room and looking at other peoples’ faces and seeing if anyone else seemed to be bothered and people were nodding their heads and I thought maybe it was just me. I just needed to man up and enjoy the music. That’s one of the biggest problems I had, getting over it in the first place, because that guilt of not leaving the room or doing something about it when I had a chance. Yeah, that was a problem for me, so anyway, after the gig finished…

Sean: Sorry, just to cut in to talk about that guilt thing. I see a lot of people talk about that…

Eddie: Yeah, I think it is a big issue. If there is any way you can blame yourself for tinnitus happening, I think it adds to the problem and I think it adds to the mental burden.

Sean: I’ve had like a couple of sound exposures that were a little crazy and one of them was actually at a concert as well and when I think about that I can understand how certain people will blame themselves and feel guilty. We’ve seen threads about this and people talk about this all the time. It’s an intense feeling for some people. The anxiety and guilt that they feel for causing the harm themselves and the anger and the ‘hatred’ that they have for someone else who did it to them, unintentionally, you know what I’m saying?

Eddie: Yes, absolutely.

Sean: In my opinion, the way I completely got over it and just … it maybe bothered me for a little while and maybe this was just my personal experience, but I just said to myself, ‘you know what, if that didn’t get me something else would have’. You know what I mean, like…?

Eddie: You’ve hit the nail on the head there, because that’s the thought process I had to go through to kind of re-stabilise myself. Because I was losing the plot and you have to reassess and use some rational thought and rational thinking and think: actually, if this wasn’t going to be the gig that was going to do it you can be damn sure somewhere down the line this was going to happen. I’m 32. By the time I was 40 this was going to be the situation. I’m 100% sure about that. So maybe it’s kind of a wake-up call. It was going to happen. Whether it was that day or a week later, or a year later. It would have happened at some point. The amount of gigs I’ve been to and clubs and bars and stuff, my ears have taken a battering over the years. It’s inescapable. At some point it was going to happen. I mean, at the age of 18 I already had it in a milder form.

Sean: If it’s a single noise event, that kind of happened with me and kind of the way you describe it, ok I can pinpoint it was ‘this’. For some reason, those people who have that, there’s a lot of people who have that guilt. Not so much the people who have the issue like I was listening to loud music with headphones like every day for years and then it kind of built up. For some reason those people are just like, yeah, it wasn’t one event, it was over time and I was stupid about it. In my opinion it’s ok to feel like that. I think back on what I’ve done in my life and you know maybe it was ... I feel genetics definitely plays kind of a role in this. It’s not just hearing.

Eddie: I agree with that. My dad’s got it as well. There’s something genetic going on because my dad’s got it really severely. And he worked in loud places as well.

Sean: Yeah, my grandfather had it. My parents have it. 35.07 Tinnitus loudness versus severity versus degree of hearing loss

Eddie: He worked in factories and stuff like that. He’s got damage to his ears. He can barely hear now, and he’s got really bad ringing. What I would consider severe tinnitus, the real deal. The stuff where it’s hard to hear what people are saying because the noise, the ringing, the jet engine so to speak. It kind of takes over. So that’s what he’s got. But I’d just like to add to that, and I know I took some flak on the Forum because of this, but it doesn’t bother him. And I’ve no idea why and I’m not saying this to kind of ruin anybody else’s opinion on what it can do to their mental health. I’m just saying there are some weird instances of people having loud tinnitus where they don’t seem bothered by it.

Sean: Yes, I think it was even Dr Rauschecker, I remember when he was talking about how the severity of someone’s tinnitus isn’t necessarily the loudness. Someone can have really low-sound level tinnitus and it could cause them more distress and ‘severity’ than someone who has louder tinnitus. I know a lot of people, like you said, and on the Forum and in general might get upset about that fact, but that is a fact that there are people who have different levels of tinnitus but the ‘severity’ of it and how it intensely it affects them is vastly different.

Eddie: Yes, absolutely.

Sean: And I think in the Dr. Rauschecker interview they are talking about that and they don’t understand why. Whether it’s a limbic system brain connection thing?

Eddie: Yeah, I think it’s exactly that. I think that’s where the limbic system hypothesis came from in the first place, which he’s been working on for many years. It’s also linked in with chronic pain as well because of people who feel pain all over their bodies all the time. It’s something going on in the limbic system of the brain and we’re not quite sure why some people hear these noises or feel the pain. But some people do, and some people don’t, so there’s obviously some kind of gating mechanism.

There are many people all round the planet. We’ve all got hearing loss to some degree. Nobody keeps all of their hearing. We can measure the upper frequencies and everybody on the planet has got upper frequency loss unless you’re a mutant or something.

Sean: Right

Eddie: It’s inevitable. We lose hair cells as we age. Even if we don’t expose our ears to noise. I’ve essentially got perfect hearing according to the audiologist.

Sean: Yeah, me too.

Eddie: I’ve got really bad tinnitus. I would consider mine to be severe. Like I said before when I had the milder form when I was 18. What happened at that gig on the Monday morning it was, and I remember waking up and I thought my life was over. I couldn’t believe that what was in my brain was even possible. It really shocked me. It was one of those gut-wrenching moments and I remember feeling physically sick and I lost the plot. I really didn’t know what to do and I was panicking. I remember looking for specialist numbers, ENT numbers and you know I was on the phone looking for who I could get help from.

I remember calling a doctor. It was either that day or the following day. I got an appointment, I remember, I think it was on a Thursday as it was the same week. I was that desperate. I was like, ‘please give me anything you’ve got. I need to see someone,’ and I remember I saw the guy and he essentially told me if it doesn’t go away – these were his exact words at the time: ‘if it doesn’t go away in six months, it’s likely going to be permanent, it will essentially be with you probably for the rest of your life. But he did give me that window of opportunity by saying it could go away in the next six months. That’s what he was trying to tell me. He did an audiogram and said my hearing was fine. The whole time I was sitting there thinking ‘what do I do, what do I do?’. 39.08 Noise exposure: How loud is too loud?

“There’s gonna be noises in your life, you can’t be afraid of every loud sound out there, but there’s a huge difference between a slamming door or a toilet seat falling down and going to a club or a concert; they’re worlds apart”

Eddie: I am really panicking at this point and he said, the other thing I remember him saying is ‘you need to avoid loud noise’. That’s one of the things that also stuck with me that he told me. But when he said ‘loud noise’ he wasn’t really talking about, you know, some of the stuff that we see on the Forum like with slamming doors and stuff like that. I never would agree with that. There are going to be noises in your life. You can’t be afraid of every loud sound out there, but there’s a huge difference between sort of like a slamming door or a toilet seat falling down and going to a club or a concert. They’re worlds apart. The intensity is on another scale. They’re not even comparable. They’re completely different things.

Sean: I think a lot of people don’t really realise, I mean a lot of people ... I don’t want to sound like …

Eddie: Yeah..

Sean: I think, in general, it’s not just the level of sound, It’s the duration of it too.

Eddie: It’s the duration yeah, exactly that.

Sean: I think a lot of people sometimes will hear a sound and if you are in a quiet environment and you hear a sound and it’s louder than the other sounds in the room you sometimes go into overdrive and think: ‘Oh my God that was so loud!’ and it will startle you and then you will think that it was super loud. Sounds that startle you seem significantly louder than they are.

Eddie: There is a startle reflex isn’t there? And it does trigger adrenaline and heightened senses and your body kicks into fight or flight mode, especially if you’re conditioning yourself to be afraid of sounds like that. Then you are basically, essentially, teaching your brain to be afraid at that point.

It’s like conditioning yourself to be afraid of a dog. My wife is terrified of dogs. Any dog. It could be any dog. It could be the most friendly, cuddliest-looking dog you have ever seen in your life and she will run a mile. She’s petrified of dogs and she relates it to an incident when she was younger when a dog, who was being walked, sort of jumped up and nipped her on the leg. Now, her mental state then kind of changed towards dogs from that day onwards and now she is scared of all dogs and she will have a physiological response to just seeing a dog. Her palms will go sweaty and she will lose the plot. She gets petrified.

Now that is just classic conditioning, a phobia to essentially a non-threatening situation and I think, and I see a lot of people with tinnitus, who seem to be in the same position. It becomes an irrational phobia to sounds. Sounds that aren’t necessarily damaging. It doesn’t matter. Sometimes their psyche grabs hold of this and it says: ‘Right, this is damaging your ears; be afraid’. Or they’ll hear a noise that is sort of non-threatening. Just a moderately loud noise that most people on the planet are going to hear maybe 50 – 60 times a day, but to them it’s like the end of the world. They go into overdrive. Your mental processing kicks in. ‘Was it dangerous? Check my tinnitus, is it louder?’. It’s a cycle of fear and irrational thoughts you know. You start going within yourself to listen if it’s got worse or not. I was the same after mine got worse for a long time. I read a lot of the posts on the Forum and, to be honest, they made me go worse. I almost sort of regretted going down the rabbit hole if you know what I mean?

Sean: Yeah, for sure.

Eddie: Because I wasn’t functioning really. I had a band set up at the time and was about to do some gigs and stuff. Some better gigs. It was going to be a better situation for me and I quit. I remember sending out the text to my bass player and saying, ‘look it’s my ears, there’s something going on where I need to cut out my live music for a while’. And you know, when I sent that text and when I said ‘a while’ I thought maybe for a year. Little did I realise that, even now, four years later that I still haven’t played live. I still haven’t gotten over that hurdle yet.

Initially, those first few months, getting into the mental aspect of it I was suicidal. I was literally beside myself. I wasn’t functioning. I stayed in bed for a week. Didn’t even get up. I just wasn’t functioning. It just ruined my life. It really took over. You know, these intense feelings that I read all the time. I felt every bit of everybody out there when they talk about this condition. I know exactly what that feels like. It is horrible. Horrendous. Something you never want to go through again. It’s really bad. 43.46 Noise levels at concerts and increasing prevalence of tinnitus

Sean: Anyway, jumping back to the music aspect. A quick story. I remember when I was in High School and we were playing a music gig at a school. It was like a Battle of the Bands or a talent show, or something like that. And the person, the technician that was working the sound stage, and everything like that, at one point he had all the bands come up for his sound check and he was holding a device and I didn’t know what the device was, and he had us play and I thought it was maybe like a sort of electrical device he was looking at and as we were playing he would say, like: ‘Turn your volume down, turn your volume down’. And what I know now is he had a sound measure in his hand, a decibel measure in his hand, and he was measuring how loud our sound was and he was making us turn down our music to a point that was safe. It didn’t click with me until years later, until now.

Eddie: There’s a story similar for me. We were playing a wedding once and there was a meter on the wall and a red light kept coming on and I remember we spoke to the manager and we said, ‘what’s that red light on the wall?’. Actually, I tell a lie, it never actually got to the red light, it was kind of like a band. It was green and it went into orange and there was like a red strip at the top. It was obviously to do with volume. And we were like, ’what’s the deal with this on the wall?’ and the manager said, ‘if it touches the red it cuts the equipment out. It’s the safety level of sound for the venue’. We’d never seen that before and we were like, ‘really?’ so I don’t know what the trip point would be but it was probably like 85db or maybe more than that, maybe more like 90 or 95, but there was a trip point so it would kill the sound if it went above a certain threshold and it was visually wired into the venue so the band could actually see right in front of you on the wall. So, you could see what kind of volume you were hitting.

Sean: To be honest I feel like a lot more places should have something like that in place.

Eddie: I agree.

Sean: When you think about it, concerts aren’t regulated sound-wise. There’s noise levels not for the people inside but for it not bothering people in their homes or their apartments. But I’m still surprised that in today’s day and age when we have safety protection for pretty much everything when it comes to bar level sounds in the bars and concert level sounds there’s no regulation; it just amazes me that that’s still not a thing.

Eddie: There’s no education either. Even if you just educated people at school about the dangers of what can happen, then they could just take earplugs and there’s other precautions you can take or just avoid places, but people don’t know. There’s no education around this at all.

Sean: I don’t get it. Hearing loss affects everyone. It’s pretty much a universal fact. I mean there are probably some freak super humans out there who, as they age, they don’t lose their hearing, but everyone has some level of hearing loss from when you were born regardless of where it comes from. But right now, it’s like 20% of people have tinnitus and I’ve talked with other researchers and pharmaceutical people about this. The people who are going into tinnitus research and looking into pharmaceutical drugs regarding tinnitus and I’ve talked with them about how they’ve seen and done studies about the fact that that number is going to skyrocket – I’m exaggerating – but that number is going to go up in the near future because the baby boomer generation is about to hit that age where they start actually losing their hearing a lot faster and tinnitus is going to be very prevalent in their lives. But not only that, the levels of sound we expose ourselves to today is significantly louder than they were in the past, so tinnitus is going to be a very big problem in the very near future.

Eddie: It’s a big problem now, you could argue. It costs the UK economy £2 billion, I think. The report was it?

Sean: Yeah, it costs the US 4 billion dollars.

Eddie: Is it the US economy? You see already that’s a problem.

Sean: Yes, that’s just for the military though. That’s not for like research purposes. That’s just paying out … from what I read, from an article I saw that it was just from … It wasn’t research I don’t think. No, it was just paying out disability for tinnitus.

Eddie: I’m sure it was £2 billion in the UK economy based on lost work and lost taxes and stuff like that, so you really would think there would be more attention paid to it. But there really isn’t is there?

Sean: No.

Eddie: No one really looks into it. On a government level nobody steps up.

Sean: I wish people would say, instead of putting a band aid on this problem, why don’t we fix the problem. Anyway, we’ve diverged again. 48.41 Prevalence and awareness of tinnitus among musicians

Sean: Jumping back. So, obviously, you’re a musician, and you have tinnitus. Do you come across a lot of people in your field of work that also have tinnitus as musicians? As everyday musicians, not necessarily just big-name rock stars?

Eddie: That’s a good question and it depends what stage in the career or what age you’re talking about. Because in the early days when you’re just doing gigs with your band in your local city, that kind of thing, you don’t hear about it at all. From my point of view, I don’t remember anybody, ever, coming up to me saying ‘Oh, I’ve got really bad ringing in my ears’ or ‘you need to watch the sound of the amp, you’re going to get bad tinnitus.’ Nothing like that ever came up in any conversation in any rehearsal room that I was ever involved with. Any band, any venue, never, never heard about it.

In fact, the only time I did there was a guy I used to play with. His name was Joe. He was a really good blues player and we were just doing a sound engineering course at the time and I remember he had these yellow earplugs in. I was like ‘Joe, what are you wearing earplugs for?’ We were like 18 or 19 and nobody was wearing earplugs. And I was, like, ‘Why are you wearing earplugs?’ and he said, ‘I don’t want to get tinnitus.’ And that’s the only thing that stands out in my mind and he’s the only guy who I can ever have any recollection of talking about it. And I thought, ’Ok, he’s sort of ahead of the curve there’ because, looking back retrospectively, he was on the right path.

Later on, so now I’ve got it, it’s kind of a different story because it’s almost like you open Pandora’s Box. And you realise that everybody’s got it then. But I’m usually the guy who instigates the conversation so, you know, I might say to a drummer or bass player or whatever, like if you just bring it up somehow in the conversation and say, ‘do you ever get tinnitus or ringing?’ I find that many of the people I speak to have got it. Like a lot. Like it’s a significant number. It’s not something like where they go ‘no, no, no, I’ve never heard of it’ or ‘what’s that?’ or ‘no’, I haven’t got any ringing’. I usually find that most of them do or I don’t know if it’s because we’re all older or it’s just because I’m bringing it up. Maybe if I wasn’t talking about it, I still wouldn’t be hearing about it. It’s one of those things.

I suppose you hear about it more if you’ve got it yourself. Which ties in with what CJ said really because he hit a point in his life where it was bad for him and he said that most of the musicians he spoke to had it bad as well or they had it at least and they were openly talking about it. So, I wouldn’t say it’s a big secret or anything like that. I’d genuinely say people only talk about it if it’s an issue and if it’s not then you won’t really hear about it.

Sean: Yes, I know some musicians who do have tinnitus and they do still play gigs surprisingly and that’s not to say that you can’t play gigs if you have tinnitus but I’m referencing myself when I say ‘surprisingly’. I couldn’t do that myself, but they still play gigs. They wear hearing protection. They’re safe about it. One of them even mentioned to me that they do actually carry a sound meter with them and they go and they play their gigs and they do their sound check, and they sound check it where it’s not going to be super-loud but it’s around 80dbs which is relatively safe for not extended periods of time.

Eddie: There was one guy, I think I’ve already posted this story on the Forum. I think it was the organ player or the keyboard player. It may have been the bass player. Because I know they both had it. I was essentially talking to this one guy, because the drummer who used to be in the band I was in, he knew a couple of guys and he kind of mentioned it in conversation one day that they had it. So one day I was at his 40th birthday party and I saw these guys and I thought I’d go and have a conversation with them about it because I saw he’d got his custom moulds out and he put them in so I thought, well I’ve got mine so it’s a conversation point so I remember going over and talking to him about it, and I said, you know, ‘what’s your tinnitus like? Have you got over it yet and what’s the deal with you still playing live?’ and all that kind of stuff. He told me it took him about three years to get over it and that he used to be obsessed with it and he’d be comparing it to which day was worse and is it better today and all that kind of stuff. So internal thoughts and feelings that he was going through. And he said after about three years he kind of just stopped doing it and kind of got over it and it was no longer really a problem for him and that he still plays live.

And, at this point, it was the other guy, whether it was the bass player or the keyboard player, I don’t remember. He joined the conversation and he’s like ‘yeah, yeah, I’ve got that as well’. And he got his ear plugs out and everyone was, like, comparing ear moulds. Because I remember he had these really freakily long ear canal moulds which were like way longer than mine. We were like ‘how does that not go through your eardrum into your brain’, because they looked insanely long. But that just shows how unique everybody’s anatomy is as well. Even the ear canal can be vastly different from one person to another. But yeah, they both said they still gig, they both still play live, and it no longer affects them on a day to day basis. I remember the one guy even telling me he thinks his had got worse, and I thought, ‘really, and you’re still playing live’, and he was nodding his head so, yeah, that’s one story of the kind of things I hear. But there are a few stories similar to that. Since I’ve got it bad it seems like everybody I talk to seems to have it.

Sean: Do you think that musicians accept it as part of hazards of the job or do you think it’s one of those things where they don’t know about it until it’s too late? Like once you know about it it’s kind of too late because you’ve already got it? In the musician world. Or do you think it’s more of a, you know about it going into it, but you take the risk; or is it you don’t know about it till it’s there?

Eddie: Both, because I knew about tinnitus like I said, I knew about it from the programme I saw when I was a kid. It was always there as something that I knew existed but it’s that same old philosophy that all humans fall into the trap of ‘it won’t happen to me’. It’s something that another person will get. I’ll be fine. Nothing bad happens to me, I’ll be fine. You know, that kind of invincible mentality. I suppose a bit of it comes down to that and the other thing would be just ignorance. There are people who just don’t know about it. They blast their ears in ignorance because they just don’t know what can happen.

Sean: Yes, that’s the kind of downfall of human ignorance says it’s not going to happen to me and I’m not going to worry about it, unfortunately.

Eddie: And that’s the problem isn’t it? That’s how we all think. You don’t get into your car every morning and think, ‘right, I’m going to crash and die today.’ But it could happen. It’s that kind of thing. It’s not really on your mind because until it happens It’s not really priority or something that you worry about, but you could say that about lots of stuff couldn’t you really? Not just tinnitus but many aspects of life are kind of under the same umbrella.

Sean: Yes, you’re right, you’re definitely right in that regard. It’s rather sad but you can’t really change people’s minds until something changes their minds for them. 56.12 Reflections on the CJ interview

Sean: Alright, so let’s see here, so what were some highlights? So, everyone by now has listened to the CJ interview you did. Was there anything in that interview that kind of was a highlight for you? Or any interesting aspects of it that you didn’t really think of before?

Eddie: It kind of reaffirmed what I already knew when he said, I asked him whether other musicians talk about it and he said yeah, a lot of the people he knew already had it. Which kind of reflects what I’ve found out as well. Stand out? Not so sure. His answers kind of reflected my own thoughts and opinions, really. It kind of reaffirmed what I already knew to some degree.

But I suppose one good point that he made was that, when you are successful there tends to be drugs and parties involved, which kind of disguises the fact that there’s a problem because you’re always high or you’re partying, so you don’t realise it’s an issue. Like for him, it became an issue when he was no longer taking drugs and then he was kind of in solitude and he’s in quiet environments more often and then he thought, ‘actually, this thing in my ears is a problem now’.

Sean: Yeah.

Eddie: And that’s when he needed to seek out help for it. So I think that’s maybe one of the factors that people don’t realise with famous people, is that – I’m not saying they all take drugs and that they’re all high and partying all the time – but if they’re a younger band that’s probably a factor in why it’s not an issue because it’s like alcohol abuse, drug abuse kind of camouflage the problem, doesn’t it? It’s a bit like the film ‘A Star is Born’. He’s kind of camouflaging his ear problems by drinking all the time and getting drunk, that’s one of the big aspects of the film, and he is in the same boat, you know. He’s a rock star so it’s obviously prevalent and people know about this stuff, but I think that is a factor if you’re famous because of the culture surrounding. Because the guys take drugs and they party and stuff. I think it only comes down when you stop that stuff and you kind of come back to the real world and you’re surrounded by a bit more, I suppose the word would be ‘normality,’ and then you realise that actually this ringing is a big deal now because there’s nothing to hide it.

Sean: Yes, it’s definitely not a normal thing in the slightest!

Eddie: CJ, I’d say he was quite candid about his experience with it and stuff.

Sean: Yes, and that’s fantastic. We need more people who are famous who have the ability to push awareness to come out and talk about it in a serious, non-sugar-coated, sense.

Eddie: I agree. Absolutely.

Sean: Ok folks. Thanks so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed the interview. If you want to read more background information about our Podcast or leave comments please visit our own Podcast page at www.tinnitustalk.com/podcast.

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I’d also like to thank Ed for taking the time to interview CJ and for helping us with setting this entire interview up.

Thanks again Ed. Have a great day and we hope to see you around Tinnitus Talk.