Denise Welch on son The 1975’s Matty Healy: ‘His success wouldn’t have happened if I was still drinking’

"...because of the worry and anxiety"

Denise Welch has revealed that her battle with depression and alcoholism could have prevented the success of her son Matty Healy’s band The 1975, due to “worry and anxiety”.

The frontman is the son of Welch and ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Pet’ star Tim Healy. Appearing on Loose Women, the actress spoke out about the impact of her own addictions on her son and his career.

“I have brought up two reasonably well-adjusted boys who are doing well,” she said. “Matty is in a successful band. He’s in a band called The 1975 who are doing very well.”

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She continued: “Like he [Matt] says, ‘Mum, if you hadn’t been a bit rock ‘n roll I wouldn’t be who I am now, but, Matthew’s success wouldn’t have happened if I was still drinking, because of the worry and the anxiety.”

Now that she’s sober and recovered, Welch jokingly added “whereas he can go off and fly now, because I’m looked after and he doesn’t have to worry about me on Twitter too much.”

 

 

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Speaking to NME in 2016, Healy revealed that a track from their acclaimed second album ‘I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It’ was written about his mother’s battle with post-natal depression.

“‘She Lays Down’ is about my mum,” Healy told NME. “It doesn’t get much more personal than that. I’m sure my mum won’t mind me saying this, but she told me a story when I was about 17, she was so gripped by post-natal depression that she was coming into my room when I was a couple of months old, lying on the floor and actively trying to love me.

“How fucking brutal is that? That is brutal – especially considering how close me and my mum are. We are like, insanely close. That resonated with me so much, I think that writing music for me is such a catharsis, and such a personal thing, I think that had to come out. “

After unveiling comeback single ‘Give Yourself A Try‘, Healy recently spoke out about his time in rehab ahead of The 1975’s anticipated third album ‘A Brief Enquiry Into Online Relationships’.

“I went and worked with horses for seven weeks,” he said. “I didn’t get dragged away to rehab, I was fucking exhausted and at the [risk] of being another statistic in that prescription drug opioid crisis that hit America, because that’s the way I dealt with things on tour. I loved going out on stage and talking to 12,000 people.”

Healy added: “I wasn’t going there to get straight edge, I didn’t have a drinking problem or anything else. I was just chemically dependent on a substance and I didn’t wanna make a record as a fucking junkie. Who wants to hear that?”

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