Good day to you all, my fabulous friends, and I hope this Friday sees you in fine fettle. What better way to celebrate entering our second year as a going concern than by dipping our toes in the traditional waters of the Friday 5. Yes, the precursor to the weekend which we take some vague concept, link some similar acts and, more often than not, point and laugh at them (the exception being our soft rock one, in which we just mercilessly fawned over them, those 80′s big-haired Gods.)
This week, we are honouring/poking with a metaphorical stick those acts who are just somewhat left of the dial, mentally. The ones for whom odd behaviour was the norm, for whom being in music allowed them to take their own personal moral code to the limits. It’s probably a grey area over how much of this is eccentricity and how much it’s a side-effect of genius. But these are certainly guys who march to their own drum. We’ve left out Michael Jackson on the grounds that, well, y’know, bit obvious;
Phil Spector – Ah, the last word in rock nuttery. Spector was a genius in his day, of that there can be no doubt, but there is a malignancy to his eccentric side. His appalling mental abuse of his first wife Roni stemmed from a dark well of jealousy, but when you add in holding the Ramones at gunpoint to finish a session – Johnny got pissed off because Spector had him playing the same chord for 9 hours and still wasn’t happy with it – to his current troubles, it’s clear that this is one troubled camper.
Julian Cope – Pure eccentricity. Pagan, Druid, Visionary, Nutbar…call him what you like, he’s still fun. Once threw a guy out of his gig for talking, but gave him a refund first. Britain’s foremost expert on ancient rites and Krautrock. Blames a lot of it on living on a diet of LSD for two years in the 80′s. Lives in a disused nuclear bunker. Top man.
Johnny Ramone – Everyone always talks about Joey, who was a slave to OCD, but that is a proper mental illness. Johnny was just a loon, but the reason he makes the list was that he was an inverse loon. He was staunchly right-wing, which in American music circles is the equivalent of shitting on the main course at a dinner party; just wrong. Stole Joey’s girlfriend and didn’t talk to him about it once in the 14 (FOURTEEN!) years they were in a band after it. Brilliantly wrong-footed the whole audience at the Ramones Hall of fame induction by praising President Bush. Mysteriously managed to hold on to most of the t-shirt money and, finally, refused to let the Ramones music be used in a documentary about the Ramones. Okay, he’s maybe more a bastard than an oddball, but he’s still cool.
Youth – Bass player in 80s mentalists Killing Joke, he seemed the sane one, which was probably more a reflection on the rest of them, but there you go. However when he became producer du jour of the 90s and beyond, the strangeness came to light. When producing Crowded House, Neil Finn recalls how he’d often make them stand in designated areas, marked out by stones he’d brought from his garden and had blessed by a shaman of dubious origin, whilst Youth would be hopping on one leg and chanting ‘PAGAN’. Quality oddness.
Bono – Well, anyone who thinks that hair dye job looks good has got to be swimming upstream mentally, right?
So, that’s that and now we can trudge forward into the delights of the weekend. I’m living every day as if it’s my last right now, so you’ll find me weeping silently in my room. Kidding!!! Have a good one, back next week.
Filed under: Friday Fives Tagged: | bono, eccentrics, Friday Five, Johnny Ramone, Julian Cope, Phil Spector, Rock odd balls, Youth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skip_Spence
Genuine lunatic, sadly. ‘Oar’ is a great album.
Will check it out.
Considered Roky Eriksson, but left him out because of the scale and type of his problems. Some talent, though.
And of course the original Fleetwood Mac who found drugs, free living, mental health problems and years of torment…….
The second incarnation weren’t much better, with all the coke and inter-relationship shagging. Certainly unconventional, and it made for some belting good tunes.
Lou Reed is a bit loopy, no? Or is he just a nasty old curmudgeon? If so, I like him more already.
Lou Reed is just a c***.
Peter Green and the bassist actually went mad…they didn’t just go to California!!! There was nothing wrong with latter Fleetwood Mac that wasn’t down to excess.
Suicide attempts….violence….Mick Fleetwood got married and divorced three times – to the same woman……
Excess? Yes. mental? Mos def.
Desmond Tutu always struck me as a bit of a loose cannon…….
neil young ?
just for the story about his ( mostly shit ) 50s rock`n`roll covers album ” this notes for you “.
His record company at the time ( geffen I think ) were in the process of rejecting the album he wanted to release and sueing him for making music ” unrepresentative ” of neil young .
So , he asked them what they wanted and they said “rock`n`roll”….
Which is exactly what he then gave them with the rather dire “this notes for you “.
Stephen Stills ? for his convincing diatribes on how he was traumatised by combat in vietnam……
…when he was never actually in vietnam ;
in his defence he did seem to actually believe he HAD BEEN in vietnam due to his raging cocaine psychosis.
Didn’t David Crosby also go mental on a boat due to cocaine psychosis a few years ago? I seem to have some dull memory of a police stand off.
David Crosby wasn’t mental, he was a cocaine addicted buffoon. Superb voice and wrote some great tunes but his problems were all self-inflicted wounds I think.
I’m not sure we get to discount psychosis on the basis of its provenance. He was still completely hat stand for a good portion of the 70s and 80s. He carried a loaded gun and hunting knife around with him, ffs.
I took original thread to be more about mentalists than wasted addicts….it is a fine line but there is a difference.
Kristin Hersh has been very ill and yet hates it and has struggled for years to ‘be normal’.
That is not the same as David Crosby who simply got ‘wasted on the way’……
Actually, I didn’t want to write about genuinely mentally ill people. That’s an illness. The people on the list are just a bit odd, fed by ego, greed, selfishness, drugs or whatever.
So crosby would be at home in this list.
He is the walrus.
coo coo ca choo.
And Lionel Hutz’s sponsor.