Music provided a necessary outlet for Drake Bell to work through his childhood trauma as a teenager — even if he wasn’t aware of it at the time.
Bell, 37, came forward last month as the previously unnamed victim of Brian Peck’s sexual abuse during his time as a child actor on Nickelodeon. Bell detailed the abuse — which led to the former dialogue coach to be sentenced to 16 months in prison prison in 2004 — on the Investigation Discovery series Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.
The revelation has led fans to comb through Bell’s discography, including his 2005 debut album, Telegraph, which Bell wrote at 15 years old in the midst of Peck’s abuse.
“A lot of my fans are going back to my first album, which I actually wrote and produced and released while I was going through it, when I was about 15 years old, while I was in the thick of all of that,” Bell told Kevin Quinn and Justin Crawford on the Wednesday, May 1, episode of their “Luminosity” podcast. “[The fans are] realizing, ‘Oh, my God, he’s been screaming from the mountaintops [about the abuse].’”
Bell continued: “[Music] was my journal at the time. That was how I got through it. I would get in the studio and be completely shattered, broken and I had a good friend I was writing music with at the time and I would come in and be like, ‘Alright, this is what we’re writing about today. I’ve got to get this out. This is what’s going on in life.’”
Bell rose to a new level of fame when he was cast on the Dan Schneider–helmed Nickelodeon sitcom Drake & Josh, opposite Josh Peck (no relation to Brian). The show’s theme song, “I Found a Way,” was written and performed by Bell in 2003 — and the actor says the song’s lyrics speak to what he was going through at the time and provided a way for him to persevere.
“[I got] a lot of what I was dealing with out through my songs,” Bell said on the podcast, going on to recite the chorus of the theme song: “It’s gonna take some time to realign / But if you look inside I’m sure you’ll find … No one can break what’s so unbreakable / I found a way, I found a way.”
Through writing the lyrics to “I Found a Way,” Bell sent a message to not only his fans but also himself.
“I think sort of subconsciously, I was trying to tell myself, ‘You tried to break me, but I’m unbreakable,’” he said. “If you actually look inside and see who you truly are and know who you are, then you’re going to find a way out. You’re going to find a way through it. And so I found a way.”
Bell has continued to use music as a form of therapy to this day. His recent release, “I Kind of Relate,” and its accompanying music video address the abuse he endured as a child actor and how he has coped with it ever since.
“The new song I just put out called ‘I Kind of Relate’ talks about my abuse, my substance abuse, my childhood trauma, my car accident, a lot of things in my life,” Bell said. “It is a great form of therapy to be able to have some outlet, whether you’re writing the songs or whether you’re finding the songs that speak to you.”
