I have never performed while under the influence... even when there were band situations that came pretty close to driving me to drink.
I've got a few horror stories of bandmates playing under the influence. In my first semi-pro band, we changed keyboardists in midstream, from a really talented, charismatic and friendly guy that had left us only to form his own project, to an older cat who listened to jazz fusion and spent loads of time making his own smooth jazz/new age recordings on his four-track. (And he'd carry copies of these tapes with him and listen to them in his car!!) This older cat quickly developed a way of half-assing through songs - many was the time that he would smoke some mota before the gig, remember very little about the songs other than some of the keyboard intros and whatever key the rest of the songs were in, and pretend he was Chick Corea for the rest of the night. This became an increasing problem at every performance until one night during our closing number of the evening where everyone would take mini-solos after being introed, this putz (who'd had more mota than usual on this night) proceeded to play a second keyboard solo while I was trying to play mine. I got so pissed off that when the show was over I confronted him over it backstage, and I forget his response but it couldn't have been very positive because I do remember yelling "YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH!!", throwing a chair at him, the rest of the band trying to get between us, me punching him in the jaw in the ensuing cluster****, and being still pissed off enough to take my frustrations out on whatever was nailed down while still screaming at the band's co-leaders "I WANT HIM OUT OF THIS BAND AND OUT OF MY LIFE!!!" This ended up a moot point because the next week I got damn near knocked out onstage by the lead guitarists' flying BC Rich guitar (he used to fling it over his shoulder at some moments a-la Cinderella) and had to take a hiatus from performing while I recovered. (I came back three months later to play one more weekend of dates with them, having taken an opportunity to play with some other cats a month after the accident.)
Instance number two was a few years later with another band; our rhythm guitar player, who had a fondness for mota, kept vowing that he was going to smoke a joint before our first show (a mini-set we'd been invited to play by, not ironically, my previous band!). We kept trying to talk him out of it, but he made good on his word. I didn't hear how he sounded onstage, but the guitar player of the headlining band did and turned him down accordingly.
Instance number three was during the year I was deejaying at a local club and I think I may have related this story elsewhere in the Talkbass forum but one night one of the regular bands had done two of their three sets, then their bassist went to the bar half-a-block down from where the club was to hang out, and proceeded to get three sheets to the wind. Maybe more sheets than that, but the consequence was that he was in no condition to play. The rest of the band ran up to me and asked me to fill in at the last moment (I'd jammed with them a few times before on a song or two) and I ended up onstage for all but a few songs of the last set.
:scowl:
