Darius Rucker has revealed that he almost died by drowning in Hawaii, before being miraculously rescued by Woody Harrelson.
The Hootie & the Blowfish singer, 58, recalled how the True Detective star, 62, saved his life in his new memoir Life’s Too Short.
Rucker explained that the incident occurred in the late 1990s, following the release of Hootie & the Blowfish’s 1998 album Musical Chairs. During a rare break from touring, he and a friend named Kurt were staying at Harrelson’s home in Hawaii.
“At Woody’s, if you want to go swimming, you don’t simply slip on your trunks and dive into the pool. Way more complicated than that,” wrote Rucker.
“We begin our swim by climbing down a jagged cliff – very slowly and carefully, inch by inch,” he added, recalling a “treacherous 25-minute descent”.
“I’m better than a decent swimmer. I’m a strong, confident swimmer,” Rucker continued before explaining that on this occasion, he lost sight of Harrelson and Kirk and was pulled under by a rip current.
“The current is ferocious. I feel as if some horrific giant squid has lashed itself around my body, circling and tightening its tentacles around my legs, dragging me under the water. I gulp and I gasp and I keep fighting,” Rucker remembered. “I fight and flail for I have no idea how long – 10 minutes, 15 – and then I hear a voice. Woody. I can’t see him, but I hear him. He’s not far.”
Eventually, Harrelson grabbed onto Rucker in the water. The pair floated until Rucker felt himself “drifting away”.
He told Harrelson to let him go after seeing “a blinding blast of white” and visions of his late mother. “The words leak out of my mouth, one at a time, each syllable a tiny jab of air, causing me to gasp. I blow out a final burst of words. ‘This is it.’”
Rucker writes that the next moments are “blank”, and that he later regained consciousness on the beach. “All I know for sure is that somehow Woody pulls me out of the current and he and Kirk drag me back to the beach because here I am, 25 years later,” he wrote.
Earlier this year, Rucker was arrested on drug charges in Tennessee.
He was charged with two counts of simple possession and casual exchange of a controlled substance and one count of violation of vehicle registration.
He was reportedly released on a $10,500 bond.
