The Life and High Times of...
It must be tough to be a creative genius; all that expectation, pressure, boundless insanity...Some of the greatest artistic minds we admire are, in fact, totally batshit crazy. Indulge, if you please, in some of the Dwarf's favourites...
Phil Spector
Harvey Philip Spector is best known for, aside from his outlandish hairstyles and possibly homicide, creating the famed “Wall of Sound” music production technique in the 60s, utilized most famously on the Beatles’ 1970 album, Let It Be (the subsequent Let It Be...Naked was a Beatles backbite; the Wall of Sound had been removed). Spector started Philles Records in 1961, a predominantly singles-based company; Spector despised LPs, calling them "two hits and ten pieces of junk". Even after his successes with bands like The Ronettes, Ramones and The Righteous Brothers, Spector became scaringly reclusive in the mid-late Seventies, apparently after a rather devastating car accident wherein he was thrown through the windshield of his car like a ragdoll.
He Did What? : According to his now ex-wife, Ronnie, Phil had revealed to her a gold coffin with a clear glass lid, promising he would kill and display her therein should she ever leave him. Dee Dee Ramone also alleged that the producer made the band play the opening chord from Rock And Roll High School for eight hours straight. Hmm, court case makes a little more sense now...
Frank Zappa
Undoubtedly one of the most interesting musicians ever to grace a stage, Frank Zappa was everything you want in a rock star: passionate, witty, talented, and entirely not a rock star cliché. Frank’s music with his band, The Mothers of Invention, was a blinding and sometimes unsettling blend of humour, proficiency and profanity which, whether or not was his agenda, garnered him much attention (especially to those in undeserved and boring positions of authority). Tipper Gore (wife of Al) had always locked horns with Zappa, she being an advocate of “Family Values” and Zappa apparently being the Anti- Christ. Some of his most quotable nuggets of wisdom have been from responses to Gore’s unfounded remarks (“I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?” he replied to the shoulder-padded one when she dared spiel about music inciting deviant behaviour. “May your shit come to life and kiss you on the face” is another gem directed toward the Gore-meister). Frank Zappa died in 1993 from prostate cancer. This 400-odd word summation can never do justice to the breadth of Frank’s amazing life and career, so I urge you to devour and sup all the information you can get on this guy.
He Did What? : To me, Frank Zappa will be known for the things he said, rather than did, despite his impressive career. Here are but a small few of the chunks of wisdom and wit Frank so regularly imbued:
“My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can”
“It's fucking great to be alive, ladies and gentlemen, and if you do not believe it is fucking great to be alive, you better go now, because this show will bring you down so much”
“Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best...”
“Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read. Forget I mentioned it. This song has no message. Rise for the flag salute”
Hunter S Thompson
The drug-addled, road-trippin’ inventor of Gonzo journalism isn’t as well known for his contributions to the music world as is for his classic literature and anarchistic temperament, but the great Hunter spent many famed years working for Rolling Stone magazine, though he rarely wrote on music. A political writer more than anything, Hunter became the iconoclastic thorn in everyone’s sides, mostly for his acerbic hatred for Richard Nixon, the man who, Hunter said, “broke the heart of the American Dream”, and “had no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad”. You can see why the Nixon administration wanted tabs on this guy. He spent his remaining years in his cabin in Woody Creek, Colorado playing with guns and inviting a myriad of like-minded friends over, until he put a bullet in his head on February 20, 2005. Having grown up an avid Hunter devotee (and still to this day), I cannot remember many more haunting moments in my high school life than heading to the 7-11 next to my school to grab a juice and seeing the (unjustly small) headline notifying me of Hunter’s suicide (a twist of the knife). I cried in the crisps aisle and read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Rum Diary about 5 or 6 times each that year. Explains why I failed History.
He Did What? : Aside from his cowboy gunplay and drug absorption, Hunter’s last wishes were to have his ashes fired from a cannon atop a tower of his own design (a fist clutching a peyote button). Friend Johnny Depp financed the celebration of Hunter’s life; "All I'm doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out.”
Little Richard
When Elvis Presley calls you “the greatest”, damn, you know you’re hot shit. The best of the best have cited Little Richard as a profound influence, including, but certainly not limited to, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, all of the Beatles, Jimmy Page and David Bowie. A raucous, upbeat blend of funk, rock’n’roll and soul, Little Richard had more energy behind a piano than...I dunno, imagine Six from Blossom on acid. Richard’s first hit was the classic Tutti Frutti in 1955, followed by a string of unprecedented hits like Good Golly, Miss Molly, Lucille and one of this writer’s all-time favourite tracks, Long Tall Sally (It plays while I’m writing this, on its fifth for today). Richard became a Born- Again Christian in the 60s, and has been singin’ for the Lord ever since (let’s say, heading in the same direction but to a different destination).
He Did What?: Little Richard made a frightening appearance on daytime soap schlock The Young and the Restless, looking more like a wax dummy covered in stretched, tanned cowhide than the God of Rock and Roll.
Jerry Lee Lewis
Killaaaah...Jerry Lee Lewis was cursed with a religious duality from an early age. Staunchly Christian yet destined to forever play ‘the devil’s music’, Jerry Lee was confrontational, lively and frequently aggressive. When record execs suggested he should switch from his famed piano to guitar, he replied, in what will be known as true Jerry Lee style; "You can take your guitar and ram it up your ass!". Set your eyes on any of his performances and you’ll see why he’s known as “rock’s first wild man”. The man has also been unsettlingly surrounded by death; his brother killed by a drunk driver when Jerry was eight, Jerry’s nineteen-year-old son killed in a car crash (in a Jeep the boy’s father had only recently rewarded him with) and his second son drowning at three years old. Perhaps his experiences with the Reaper explain his reaction when Elvis Presley was found dead in 1977; "I was glad [when Presley died]", he once said. "Just another one out of the way. I mean, Elvis this, Elvis that. All we hear is Elvis. What the shit did Elvis do except take dope that I couldn't get a hold of?"
Imagine what’s inside that big ol’ head.
He Did What? : Lewis married his first cousin (once removed); him at 22, her at the tender, creepy age of 13. The scandal caused a mass ban on Jerry Lee on most TV shows and the wild man went into hiding.
Lester Bangs
The King of Rock Critique, Lester Conway Bangs paved the way for rock writing as we know it., becoming the eminent superman we know him as today began when he started work for Rolling Stone. Lester frequently submitted negative reviews on the shit-hot bands at the time due to his intricate and personal tastes (one of the few brave men who dared to hate Led Zeppelin), RS co-founder Jann Wenner fired Lester, saying he was “disrespectful to musicians” (though, for some reason lost to me, he worshipped Lou Reed and regarded his 1975 album, Metal Machine Music as the greatest of all time). It was his subsequent move to Detroit where he wrote for Creem magazine that cemented his legacy. On interviewing, Lester once said, “Well basically I just started out to lead [an interview] with the most insulting question I could think of. Because it seemed to me that the whole thing of interviewing as far as rock stars and that was just such a suck-up. It was grovelling obeisance to people who weren't that special, really. It's just a guy, just another person, so what?". Lester was even a musician in his own right, forming a band called Birdland with Joey Ramone’s brother, Mickey Leigh. Bangs died in 1982 of, you guessed it, drug overdose. Though it was simply an unfortunate cocktail of cold medicines.
He Did What? : Wrote one of the most interesting and bizarre record reviews ever on Led Zeppelin’s III album; see it here: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/06/19/000700.php
GG Allin
GG Allin began life as Jesus Christ Allin. That’s enough to eff a kid up for life, but his life progressively got weirder from the word go (or in this case, the word ‘Jesus’). His family lived in a cabin without water and electricity and GG’s father reportedly sexually and physically abused his children, and did not allow conversations in the home after dark. One of those crazy religious types. Thankfully, GG’s mother legally changed his name to Kevin Michael when he was six. GG would be known in his school years as a ‘misfit’: turning up to school in drag, staring riots and other acts of general anarchic behaviour. GG fronted more bands in his musical career than you poke a bloody stick at (...into someone’s eye), including The Jabbers, The Cedar Street Sluts, The Scumfucs and The Texas Nazis. In 1989, Allin went to prison for still-debated rape and torture of a female acquaintance. In 1993, at the age of 36, Allin died of a heroin overdose. The funeral turned into a party celebrating the life of the wild man, with friends posing with the unwashed, barely dressed corpse and pouring whiskey into its mouth. The “ceremony” was filmed as is widely available for purchase, and it was included on the GG Allin doco Hated.
He Did What? : GG became a deity of the underground hardcore scene due mostly to his radical stage persona. He indulged in such acts as eating and drinking his own bodily fluids (yes, those ones too) and beating himself half to death with anything solid enough on offer.
Some other bits and piece of random insanity:
Courtney Love auditioned for the Mickey Mouse Club at the age of 12 but was rejected for reading a Sylvia Plath poem in the try-out.
Ozzy Osbourne once snorted a line of live ants “for a kick”.
French pop singer Serge Gainsbourg wrote and sang a duet called Lemon Incest. His accompanying vocalist? His pre-pubescent daughter Charlotte. Uurghl.
Nicholas Cage and his wife named their son Kal-el, the name Superman was given when he was born on the planet Krypton. God, I wish I were making this stuff up.
More Love ludicrousness: Queen of Quilts and other such homemaker nonsense Martha Stewart has apparently bought Kurt Cobain’s back catalogue of songs for seventy million dollars from the blonde crack-ed one. No, I don’t know why. But now all I can think of Nirvana-Martha Stewart puns, a pox on this overactive imagination!
