‘I’d caused the implosion of my fresh marriage’: The moment Nicole Kidman put Keith Urban into rehab

Keith Urban had just married the love of his life, Nicole Kidman, and was playing shows in sold-out stadiums, but his unresolved addiction issues were about to derail his life.

It had been helter-skelter business as usual for Keith after he took his vows.

Two weeks on from the wedding, he was back out with Kenny Chesney for a stadium show at LP Field in Nashville and come 13 July he was playing to his own full house in Ontario, Canada, with his wife watching from the wings.

A few nights later, back in the US, Keith began his set by playing ‘Days Go By’ as he ran down a 20-metre-long catwalk that led him deep into the crowd.

Even the pouring rain didn’t prevent the 30,000-strong crowd from going gaga. Keith snuck in Creedence’s ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’ as a nod to the unkind weather gods.

Keith was well and truly back on the rollercoaster, with more dates to play and a new album to complete.

Keith Urban walks across the stage to accept his award for video of the year at the CMT Music Awards show on April 10, 2006 in Nashville, Tenn. Picture: John Russell

The title had been altered to Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing so as not to upset fans who might take umbrage at the word ‘damn’. ‘Once in a Lifetime’, the song he’d written to reassure his fiancée that they were the real deal, had been released as the lead single in late August, and created a new record when it became the highest debuting song in the 62-year history of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, coming in at number 17 on its first appearance.

It stayed in that chart for 20 weeks and over time sold some 500,000 copies - a gold record.

It was yet another hit, Keith’s thirteenth Hot Country Top 10 on the trot. Each of these songs had also broken into the mainstream Top 50; ‘Once in a Lifetime’ peaked at number 31. It also breached the Australian Top 20, reaching number 18.

During a muggy Nashville day in August, Keith had previewed his new album – still a few months away from its official release - to a writer from Billboard. Keith periodically put in calls to his wife during the interview, blowing kisses into the phone and saying, ‘I love you.’ Keith pointed out that he and Nicole liked to travel together whenever they could; he missed not having her in town.

‘You don’t want something cool to happen to you and not have the person you love there to share it with you,’ Keith said, reasonably enough.

In mid-October, Nicole was in Rome promoting her Diane Arbus biopic Fur, and spoke warmly about Keith to the press.

‘I love being married to my husband,’ she said. ‘It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.’ Meanwhile, Keith had just been photographed for the cover of his new album by high-end fashion photographer Max Vadukul, and had been voted the sexiest man in country music in a poll in the Country Weekly mag.

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban on their wedding day in 2006.

But a couple of weeks earlier, when he played a show at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, something was clearly up.

He seemed physically drained; there was a faraway look in his eyes, totally out of character for a focused performer who was always very much in the moment.

Then, according to at least one person who knew Keith well, he slipped.

It was just one night, one boozy Cognac bender, but that was enough. Clearly, his upcoming new album, and all it would entail, was weighing on Keith, but he was also adjusting to his new, higher-profile life.

And, according to some reports, he also had to cope with the added pressure of a prenuptial agreement that, in short, stated clearly that he shouldn’t get fucked up - which was precisely what he did. (Both newlyweds denied that any such prenup existed.)

Despite going through ‘the program’ twice, Keith didn’t have a sponsor, a fellow recoveree to whom he could speak and unload. He didn’t attend AA meetings. Keith had no support group, nobody he could depend on to get him through the rough patches. He wasn’t properly equipped to cope with his addiction.

‘I went off the rails,’ Keith said. ‘I hadn’t conceded to myself that I needed help and a new direction in my life.’

When Nicole learned about Keith’s bender, she booked a flight back to the States and reached out to some of Keith’s closest friends and allies, mostly from Nashville, and arranged an intervention.

Soon enough, Keith was sitting in a room surrounded by his wife and a group of people who genuinely cared for him.

‘The love in that room in that moment was just right,’ Keith told Oprah Winfrey. ‘To see love in action in that way . . . I’d never experienced anything like that before.’

He was completely humbled.

Keith Urban with Nicole Kidman in Nashville, Tennessee in 2006.

‘I was very, very blessed to have Nic call an intervention on me,’ he would tell Rolling Stone. In his own words, he was ready ‘to make a decision which road I was going to take, once and for all’.

Keith had a show booked at the Mohegan Sun Casino in upstate Connecticut, but rather than plugging in and playing, he packed his bags and checked into the Betty Ford Center at Rancho Mirage, California, on 19 October. (Fellow rehab-er Tommy Emmanuel said that Betty Ford was right for Keith. He believed it had a ‘really good, solid program’.)

As Keith described it, ‘The night I went in, it was total surrender.’ His mantra - which sounded a lot like one of his lyrics - was ‘Let’s do it and let’s do it right this time.’

Keith even left behind his guitar, as he had done during his time at Cumberland Heights.

It was a massive sacrifice for such an obsessed musician. But part of his rehab was the need to discover who he was away from music, which had defined him pretty much all his life. As Keith would tell a reporter, ‘I had to find out, “What am I doing and why do I do it?”’

A post from Keith appeared on his website, which read: ‘As you’ve likely discovered by now, last night I voluntarily admitted myself into a treatment centre. I feel calm and optimistic about the future and with finally coming to terms with the reality of my condition.’

He may have been a wreck, but Keith understood clearly what personal peril he was in.

‘I’d caused the implosion of my fresh marriage,’ Keith later admitted. He would have understood if Nicole had upped and left, he said - as devastating as that would have been. But for the grace of god, she didn’t.

Instead, she contacted her publicist, Wendy Day, and advised her, ‘Wendy, I’m standing by Keith and that’s all I have to say.’

In an unfortunate turn of events, Angus Hawley, Nicole’s brother-in-law, also entered rehab soon after Keith, spending several weeks at the Sydney Clinic, which specialised in drug addiction and mood disorders.

He and Antonia Kidman separated soon after.

Keith Urban in 2007.

No crisis is complete without a formal press release, and one was duly issued on Keith’s behalf by his Nashville publicist, Paul Freundlich.

It read: ‘Keith Urban voluntarily admitted himself to a treatment rehabilitation center last night with his wife by his side.’ Keith was then quoted: ‘I deeply regret the hurt this has caused Nicole and the ones that love and support me. One can never let one’s guard down on recovery, and I’m afraid that I have. With the strength and unwavering support I am blessed to have from my wife, family and friends, I am determined and resolved to a positive outcome.’ Everything related to Keith’s upcoming album - live shows, personal appearances, interviews- were put on hold indefinitely.

Messages of support came from the obvious sources - Keith’s label boss, Mike Dungan, said, ‘we just want him to get healthy’ - and some less obvious sources. Country great George Jones, a notorious hellraiser once known as ‘No Show Jones’ (until he got sober in 1999, after almost dying in a car crash), was asked what advice he had.

The 76-year-old Jones said that Keith should look into the damage booze and drugs had done to his career, and to his life. That would be a hell of a wake-up call. There was a caveat, though: ‘It’s hard to give the younger artists advice that they are going to take,’ said Jones, ‘because they are still young in life.’

But Keith had more than his career to lose this time if rehab didn’t stick; his marriage was also at risk.

And by his own admission, he was ‘ready’ for rehab, probably more so than he had been for his two previous stints.

Keith said he was hell-bent on shaking off ‘the shackles of addiction’ and extended his stay from one month to two, while Nicole holed up in LA with fellow Aussie and friend Naomi Watts. Nicole’s sister Antonia, who was pregnant, also joined her.

Keith was so involved with his recovery, in fact, that a few weeks in, on 6 November, when the CMA Awards were staged in Nashville, he had completely forgotten, despite receiving several nominations.

The audience in Nashville, however, hadn’t forgotten about Keith, even though he was missing in action.

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban arriving at ARIA Awards in Sydney. Picture: Fiona Morris

When his Song of the Year nomination was announced, for ‘Tonight I Wanna Cry’, the cheer that went up inside the Gaylord Entertainment Centre was the loudest for all the contenders (even though Keith didn’t win).

Clearly, he had the support of all the key figures in Music City, some of whom understood all too well what he was going through. Up-and-comer Joe Nichols, who’d hit big with the oh-so-subtle ‘Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off’, had recently been in treatment, as had the troubled Mindy McCready (who committed suicide in 2013) and Trace Adkins, who went through rehab in 2002 after crashing his pick-up truck while on a bender. Keith wasn’t alone.

Keith was also in the running for Male Vocalist of the Year, one of the key CMA Awards, which, in the words of elegant, shiny TV star Eva Longoria, who presented the award, ‘celebrates the amazing men of country music’.

The crowd rose to its feet when Keith was declared the winner. Keith’s old friend Ronnie Dunn, who would appear on Keith’s new album on the track ‘Raise the Barn’, stepped up to say a few words on his behalf, ending with a simple: ‘We love you, Keith. Good luck, brother.’

Back at the Betty Ford Center, a staffer walked into Keith’s room. ‘You just won something,’ he said to Keith. ‘Male vocalist? CMAs or something?’

‘Really?’ Keith replied, more than a little shocked. ‘Yeah. Off to bed.’

With that, the staffer closed the door to the room and turned off the light.

Keith turned to his roommate. ‘Hey, I just won Male Vocalist of the Year.’

‘How weird is this?’ Keith thought to himself, lying there in the dark.

An edited extract from Keith Urban by Jeff Apter, Allen & Unwin, $33, out March 29

Originally published as ‘I’d caused the implosion of my fresh marriage’: The moment Nicole Kidman put Keith Urban into rehab