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<\/p>\nTo me, it feels like teenage heartthrob Leif Garrett does not get enough credit as an artist and performer. He deserved so much more!<\/p>\n
Throughout his career, the former teen idol experienced extreme highs and lows, but the highs he sought through drug addiction, which he used as a crutch, resulted in him sinking his career\u2026<\/p>\n
Before you see him today, at 61, it might be good to hold your breath\u2026What a babe he was\u2026.. Leif Garrett started as a child actor, and in the 1970s, he set the hearts of young women to fluttering when he became a musician.<\/p>\n
My mom told me that when she went to the grocery store with her parents, she could see Leif\u2019s face on all of the teen magazine covers at the checkout lanes.The American singer-actor, born in Hollywood, California, was 5 years old when he first appeared in the movie Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice in 1969, which became the sixth highest-grossing film of the year.<\/p>\n
Following that role, the sleepy-eyed, flaxen-haired heartthrob featured in the film Walking Tall, along with its two sequels. In 1983 he joined a number of fellow teen heartthrobs, including Matt Dillon, C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze and Tom Cruise, in Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s The Outsiders.<\/p>\n
Some might also recognize him from his performances in TV series, like Family, The Odd Couple (1974), Wonder Woman (1978) and CHiPs (1979).<\/p>\n
In 1977, he released his first album Leif Garret, and fans went wild when he performed covers of popular songs like The Wanderer (Dion), Surfin\u2019 USA (The Beach Boys) and Paul Anka\u2019s Put Your Head on My Shoulder.<\/p>\n
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Garrett was on top of the world. The blond, shaggy-haired singer toured worldwide, and his fans (mostly young girls) went crazy as soon as they saw him.<\/p>\n
\u201dI was on a public appearance tour in Sydney, Australia, and they had to fly me in by helicopter and then I jumped into an armored car and drove into the theater by back door. I\u2019ve tried using a lim there before, but the fans almost tipped it over. I guess it\u2019s an adrenalin push for them. They just freak out. It\u2019s very weird,\u201d Garrett told New York Daily News in 1979.<\/p>\n
But even though his music was close to topping the charts, he struggled with management that made him feel like a \u201cfraud.\u201d The crossover to adulthood was also a challenge for Garrett.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I was a good performer from the get-go but I wish they had offered me singing lessons before ever making a record and doing the typical punching in a sentence here or there or words or whatever,\u201d Garret said in an interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a particular track (I Was Looking for Someone to Love) that doesn\u2019t even sound like me at all. I would even possibly say I wasn\u2019t even on that track. And to me, that IS fraud. That\u2019s like a Milli Vanilli situation, the difference being, of course, mine was blended many times with myself and somebody else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garrett\u2019s career started to go downhill in 1979 when, drunk and drugged, he crashed a car and sent it tumbling down a hillside in North Hollywood, leaving his then-close friend Ronald Winkler a paraplegic.<\/p>\n
But that wasn\u2019t enough for Garret, whose life continued its negative spiral.<\/p>\n
In 1980, a time he describes in his book as \u201cthe apex of pinup fame,\u201d Garret revelled in sex, drugs and rock and roll with the legendary frontman of Queen, Freddie Mercury, who was at the time recording the hugely successful album The Game, which featured the hits \u201cCrazy Little Thing Called Love\u201d and \u201cAnother One Bites the Dust.\u201d Garrett said he became friends with the band, who showed him a real rock star life with girls and drugs.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Fox for the release of his memoir, Idol Truth, Garrett said:\u201cI don\u2019t think I was a very mature 16-year-old. I became mature very quickly because I was always surrounded by adults who were drinking and doing coke. I was a child, but being treated as an adult\u2026 And all of this was coming out of my pocket.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cYou know, I probably have the greatest fan base that I could ever imagine for myself. They have stuck with me through thick and thin. And as you know, I\u2019ve gotten myself in plenty of bad situations. There was a lot of bad decision-making. But at the same time, I didn\u2019t have the parental guidance that I should have at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Garret\u2019s tally of charges is extensive. He dropped out of rehab and had numerous run-ins with the police, including whilst trying to buy drugs from undercover cops and trying to hide heroin in his shoe.<\/p>\n
Despite making very effort at clawing his way back to the top, Garrett ultimately returned to his old habits. Because of his laughable experiences with the law, Garrett was selected to provide commentary on the comedy show World\u2019s Dumbest, which chronicles the \u201cmost amazingly stupid\u201d criminals.<\/p>\n
The show also used other celebrities known for personal misadventures, like Todd Bridges, Tonya Harding, Gary Busey and Danny Bonaduce.<\/p>\n
Then Garrett landed a starring role on VH1\u2019s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, a show he did not want to appear on. Garrett accused the show of having him relapse for drama, a claim emphatically denied by VH1.<\/p>\n
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In an interview the LA Times, Garrett said: \u201cThey asked to get some footage of me using, and I said, \u2018I haven\u2019t been using. They said, \u2018We really have to get footage of you using.\u2019 Anyway, I was easily talked into showing them.\u201d<\/p>\n
When a counselor with the production called him out, suggesting he was still using, Garrett walked off the show saying: \u201cThis is insanity and quite honestly I don\u2019t appreciate it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fortunately, Leif Garrett is sober today.<\/p>\n
\u201dI had a 90-day sentence in county jail. I was in court-ordered rehab before that, and then my mom visited and told me she had stage IV lung cancer. I said, \u2018I\u2019m leaving to take care of her\u2014nobody lives with her.\u2019 So dealing with that, I started using again. So it was like, \u2018Cuff him, bring him in,\u2019 and I did the 90 days, and that was it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
According to the former teen idol, he\u2019s still very grateful for all his fans.<\/p>\n
\u201dI\u2019ve kept every photo or letter that a young lady sent, telling me about being on their walls and kissing me good night before they went to bed,\u201d Garrett told Closer. \u201cIt\u2019s very surreal and a bit embarrassing, but how flattering! I can\u2019t thank [my fans] enough, because I\u2019m still able to do something I enjoy and get paid for it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To me, it feels like teenage heartthrob Leif Garrett does not get enough credit as an artist and performer. He deserved so much more! Throughout his career, the former teen idol experienced extreme highs and lows, but the highs he sought through drug addiction, which he used as a crutch, resulted in him sinking his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newzdiscover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newzdiscover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newzdiscover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newzdiscover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newzdiscover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newzdiscover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4622,"href":"https:\/\/newzdiscover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618\/revisions\/4622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newzdiscover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newzdiscover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newzdiscover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}