Greg WilliamsEd Sheeran was a guest Sunday on Desert Island Discs, a long-running BBC Radio show where artists talk about which records they’d bring with them to a desert island. Ed also revealed that initially, he found it very difficult to handle his success.
Ed told host Kirsty Young that because he’s a solo artist who doesn’t have a backing band, the isolation he experienced on the road made him a little crazy.
“Playing in front of, like, 87,000 people and walking off and sitting in a dressing room afterwards with nothing but an air conditioning sound…you don’t really know how to come down from there,” Ed revealed. “I will admit I did lose myself for a bit…you can’t really not go mental in that setting.”
When asked what he meant by that, Ed said — without giving details — that he indulged in all the cliche bad behaviors that most artists get caught up in. Young then asked Ed what made him stop.
“Was it somebody saying to you, ‘Ed, get a grip, mate. You wanna stop it with the girls and the drugs and the booze and get back on track here’?” she asked the singer. “Or was it yourself, saying it to yourself?”
“It was my cousin actually,” Ed told Young. “My cousin, who worked on the tour, and he basically said he was leaving if it didn’t calm down.”
Ed said these days, he has some of childhood friends working for him — because they’ll tell him when he’s being a jerk.
Ed also chose songs by Eminem, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder and Elton John as those he’d bring with him to a desert island — along with a lifetime supply of ketchup.
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