Drea de Matteo: “I’ve Done Every Drug Under the Sun”

“WE’RE TALKING about you, shithead,” Drea de Matteo baby-talks into her cellphone. Best known as The Sopranos’ consonant-challenged Mob girlfriend–turned–FBI informant Adriana la Cerva, de Matteo, 30, is smoking Winstons on a ratty black couch in what she calls “the old fuck-pad.” It’s a dog hair–laden lounge upstairs from Filth Mart, the vintage clothing store in New York’s East Village that she has run for the last six years with her ex-boyfriend Mike Sportes.

The shithead in question is her new beau, Shooter Jennings, a 24-year-old singer-songwriter who’s the son of the late country-music legend Waylon Jennings. Her friend Vince Vaughn introduced the pair a year ago at the Whisky a Go Go in Hollywood. Now, the same Queens-born rock & roll chick who got booted from her New York University dorm for playing Black Sabbath too loud is gussied up like a Hee Haw refugee: straw cowboy hat, weathered boots and a little brass six-shooter buckle tacked to her belt.

The Southern-fried look suits her; a somewhat less savory image is that of de Matteo as the furry teenage Deadhead she admits she once was: “I followed them around for a while. I had really long hair on my legs and armpits.” But her hair wasn’t the only thing running wild: “I’ve taken acid a million times and never tripped on it,” the actress reckons. “It might have been because I was ingesting plenty of other things at the time – who knows. I’ve done every drug under the sun.”

David Bowie, Christiane F. Original Soundtrack
EMI, 1981
“It’s the bleakest movie ever. It was my favorite when I was a kid. It’s about a 13-year-old drug addict. I watched it over and over again, until my mom took it away from me. The character reminded me of myself, even though at that point in my life I hadn’t done those kinds of drugs.”


Neil Young, Live Rust
Reprise, 1979
“This is pure high school. My boyfriend at the time got into a horrible accident. He was paralyzed from the chest down. I wheeled him around for a while, and the only thing we could do was go to music shows. I was still a virgin, and I’d never slept with him. I was probably about to. This is the album we always used to listen to.”


Mott the Hoople, Wildlife
Atlantic, 1971
“I listened to this over and over again when I was doing Prey for Rock and Roll. I got it when I was 20 and in film school. I saw the album cover and thought, ‘That looks awesome.’ I was never good in school. I get too scared of people. I’m better after classes, when people come to my place and listen to music.”


Hank Williams III, Lovesick Broke & Driftin'
Curb, 2002
“My friend Agatha Blois, who makes clothes for rock stars, turned me on to this. I always listened to Hank Sr., but Hank III is my favorite today. My bass coach from Prey for Rock and Roll is friends with him. I met him through her. He seemed like a nice guy. He has a mohawk under his cowboy hat.”


The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
Virgin, 1972
“[My ex-boyfriend] Mike and I had a best friend, Jamie Sollene, who ran the store here. He died in 2000 of complications from asthma. ‘Loving Cup’ was always my friendship song with Jamie. Like the line in the song, he was the guy who’d bring me flowers when I had none.”


The Velvet Underground, Loaded
Warner Bros., 1970
“‘Oh! Sweet Nuthin’ ’ also reminds me of Jamie. Just before he died, he brought this album and Exile on Main Street in the car to listen to on our drive out to the Hamptons. Right after he died, I’d listen to that song before doing all those hysterical crying scenes for The Sopranos.”


Rush, Rush
Mercury, 1974
“This is just badass rock & roll. I’ve had it since high school. People always know ‘Tom Sawyer’ but don’t know this stuff. ‘Working Man’ is the best Rush song, and one of the best rock songs I know. This album always makes me think of hanging out with my girlfriends in a parking lot, comb in my back pocket, drinking beer out of a can.”


Waylon Jennings, Waylon Live
Buddha, 1976
“This is Shooter’s daddy. Shooter and I met at the Made movie premiere. I don’t remember meeting him, but he told me he said, ‘I’m going to have that girl.’ Since I’ve been with him and he’s told me all this inside stuff about his father, I think he was the coolest guy alive. ‘You Asked Me To’ is Shooter’s song to me.”


Black Sabbath, Sabotage
Warner Bros., 1975
“I didn’t really listen to this album until I was a senior in high school. I didn’t have many friends, and I was always trying to be like everyone else. Then I went to college, where I could be more alone and I didn’t have to go to class if I didn’t want to. I went into my own world and listened to a lot of Sabbath. A lot.”


Lynyrd Skynyrd, All Time Greatest Hits
MCA, 2000
“There’s no other song in the world like ‘Simple Man,’ and I wish someone had given me that advice when I was growing up. Just live your life, man, and look inside yourself. In five years I want to be living in the country, listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd on the porch and petting my horses.”