The Smiley Smile Message Board

While discussing Brian vs. the other Beach Boys' contributions in another thread, I noted that much of my initial attraction to the Beach Boys as a twenty-year-old (after spending the past dozen or so as an avid hater of what I wrongly saw as a dopey surf group who ripped off Chuck Berry tunes and sang out of tune) was because of the Brian Wilson myth: insane genious, recluse, unfinished masterpiece.

In college I did a story about the same general theme among serious musicians (I don't like to say "classical," since that's a period, not a genre, but that is what I mean here), including the public or writers sometimes assigning either insanity or dark, mystical nature to people like Mozart, Paganini, etc.

And even now, those musicians who have teetered on the brink (or gone over) are often focused on by certain groups of critics and fans. Daniel Johnston to Skip Spence to Syd Barrett to...ad infinitum.

What is the fascination with the image of tortured genius, do you think? Do you have other examples that are interesting?

Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain, Peter Green, Jandek, Nick Drake, Robert Johnson, a bit of Brian Jones maybe.

Excellent topic, I think about this myself from time to time. Let me come back with some thoughts later. I'm at work, and it's a busy day.

One thing that I believe is true, I think creativity is an outlet, a safety valve, a means of contact, for people who can't relate or interact with other people in normal, natural circumstances. It's therapy. Part of what draws these folks to creative expression, and part of why some excel at it, is because for them it's the one way they can reach the world and show who they are. I'm not saying these are the only people drawn to the arts of course, or that all artists can be described as such, but I think it's a considerable factor. I believe to some extent, a sense of alienation, isolation, being different, actually fosters creativity. You need to get it out of you, you need to find a release.

Glad one person liked my topic...

 :-\

I think all humans are attracted to the vulnerability inherent in the art of those who have "problems". It just piques our interest, but I don't think anyone could really explain why. Maybe we're sadistic in a certain way over these issues.

Things are always kinda quiet here on the weekend, it'll pick up a bit on Monday.

What is the fascination with the image of tortured genius, do you think? Do you have other examples that are interesting?

I think all of us in the end have the gifts of pathos. Some feel that caring about this music, they are helping out the person in general. Some feel that getting into them maybe they will "save" them from their issues and be the hero in the end. I keep thinking of Van Gogh. That after he died the issues in him, people felt as attracted to the person as to the paintings. People in the end want to relate to each other.

"Genius is pain" - John Lennon.

I couldn't agree more.

There is something exstreamly appealing in a person that  is tourted, and that is able to put that on to a record and touch people who otherwise might not be able to exspress themselves in that same manner..John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, good exsamples, of people that reached out and were able to wear their hearts on their sleeves, and for that people love them... Even if people arent attracted to  what their words are, after hearing their story and being able to realate..

Myself for exsample, I knew some of the beatles stuff about 6 years ago, not really my more then hard days night, help, etc.  My man turned me on to Plastic Ono Band, and Mother hit me like a ton of bricks I hadnt ever heard someone be able to communicate the pain that I was walking around with inside for years... Broke my heart into a 1000 peices, after that I beacame a John Lennon freak... (have a tattoo of the lryics to that song actually.)

xoxo suga

I think this is one reason Pet Sounds is so deeply loved, too, besides for the sheer beauty of the music. It's a "What am I doing? Where am I going? How will it turn out?" kind of record that everyone can't help but relate to. And you find comfort in knowing that you're not alone. I had a friend who went blind the year it came out, and when he heard it, he  became a lifelong Beach Boys disciple. He said it was the first time that he ever felt that someone knew what he was going through.

I really don't get the allure of Ian Curtis and the death-tripping cult that surrounds Joy Division. Or, rather, I *do* get it, but it sickens me. Here's an asshole who did nothing more than construct a platform via his body of work from which to hang himself, and it's so "romantic" that he foretold his death in "Love Will Tear Us Apart." There's nothing humanistic in that music; it's anti-human. f*** your nihilism; I don't need any cheerleading for my own suicidal thoughts.

I have thought that "genius" and madness are close friends.  Genius is partially seeing the world through glasses that no one else can see with, and that loneliness itself is a type of madness in a way I think.  I know that when I feel alone, for instance, in my tastes (and I know thanks to you all I am not but it feels that way) I worry about myself, what is wrong with me.  And those who have the vision to see new horizons are often seeing those horizons because they are so very radically different from all those around them.  And being an outsider can drive you crazy at times.  My understanding was that Mozart managed to make it in general in day to day life but had some really bad moments -- and often that was when he made his best work.  I daresay that the same could be said for Brian.

Woa.. back the foda up.. Ian Crutis, (someone who never really lived up to their potential in music..)
Man people can speculate all they want as to wheter or not he used hanging himself as a way to lift himself to god like status... (I sense something deeper then that  only he knew..) Second, I have never felt like there is a death cult of people that flock to joy division... They are a fodain amazing band, there is no way to get around that..  And love will tear us apart is one of the best tunes of 1980..... An asshole, can you really make that call dood?  I mean merda the man had problems.  Problems that fodain hundreds of men are stricken with and it dont make them assholes... not at all  Hitler= asshole... And, when I hear love will tear us apart, I hear someone that is having issues that most people encounter in a relationship... I have exserpienced those same feelings.. And you hafta addmitt the music (lwtua) is sooooo upbeat to that tune it hurts....

xoxoxo
suga

The thing is, Ian Curtis hung himself because he was desperate, unhappy and had had enough. The last thing he was thinking about was creating a legend. Joy Division at the time were only NME-reader popular - the first album had got good reviews but they were still making very little money, he had a wife and kid to support and had just found himslef a Belgium lover to further complicate things.

Joy Division's music IS humanistic, but it is experimental, bleak and savage. He was made a legend in death through the NME and the rest of the UK music press, but the reality, like Cobain is of someone who got what he wanted (to a much lesser extent - Nirvana were MUCH bigger) and then found he didn't want it after all.

What inspires artists, writers, musicians etc and what makes them unique IS a view of life that is skewed sidewise from the mainstream. Living there is not easy however, you have to take what is thrown at you for being different, and many are not well equipped to deal with the problems that fame brings. For others the struggle is too much - Nick Drake wanted success but couldn't bring himself to get out there and push, and then couldn't handle the appalling state of limbo he found himself occupying.

THis is why Dylan has kept going where so many others have failed. He has adjusted to the fame issue by playing by his rules and his only.

I always think that there is no such thing as normal. If looked at by the rest of the world, we would all be classed as weird. It's how well you hide it that keeps you unnoticed!

Good thread!

Not much to add on my part. I'm not surprised Ian Curtis did himself in, but the death cult aspect is extraneous to the appeal of the doomy music, imo, though the morbid posthumous appeal is fully to be expected given the elegant necrophila on the cover of Closer etc.

I love songs like Atrocity Exhibition and Love Will Tear Us Apart. The passionately alienated, numb, desperate persona-person voicing them is undeniably part of what makes them  so persuasive...and yet, had he not died, they'd still be just as powerful. Lou Reed never o.d.ed, he's almost sickeningly healthy acting these days (not that I believe he's a sane, well adjusted human being for even one moment, however much he pretends to be!), and yet Heroin and Venus in Furs are as exhilarating odes to self destruction and surrender to the void as they ever were.

I get nervous about revering the sickness as crucial to the creativity.  I admit the Nick Drake of Pink Moon, the Brian who composed-instigated  Day in the Life of a Tree or Till I Die radiated pathos, and miraculously sublimated their sorrow into  haunting music. There's no getting round that, though the preoccupation with both guys as bruised souls is a bit too much for me to take sometimes.

Elliott Smith is a case of an artist I'd really rather not have known the personal history of. He was and remained a dazzling pop tunesmith  and musician till the end. His music can stand on its own without the troubling/troubled life story as pathetic prop.

True, but it's inescapable.

Or,
Layla vs. 461 Ocean Boulevard.

You know?

Great post, Alan. Maybe I was a bit harsh. But I can't help but feel that even if you have "had enough," it's not an excuse to take your own life. I know Curtis struggled with health problems, but the bleak outlook in his music -- and despondency is a part of the human condition; I accept that, and it's certainly valid in art -- coupled with his sad end is so devoid of anything positive that I find it difficult to rally round the cause.  Just not for me.

If anyone REALLY wants to get the cause and meaning behind Curtis's death, watch Werner Herzog's Stroszek, the film he was watching at the time of his suicide.

 Wasnt he listening to Iggy Pop  the idiot at the time as well?

xoxoxo
suga

Don't idly mess around with this film, be careful! It could be a loaded gun waiting for you to put it to your temple!

Actually, seeing it again recently, I found it reassuringly sane, warm and humane although the world it portrays is anything but: it was Herzog's tremendous empathy (and humor) I responded to this time. Seeing it when it was  fairly new, and back to back with far more terrifying Herzog film of similar title Woyzek, I walked out of the theatre and found myself precipitated into an instant nervous breakdown (simmering on the backburner for a long time), as well as the path of an oncoming truck! Thank goodness someone pulled me out of the way.  The despair-component of the film resonated unexpectedly and rather dangerously for this unstable youth, so be careful!  ;) 

 Is it about and alchohlic in germany?

just wondering if I have the right flick...

xoxo
suga

It starts that way, but moves to Wisconsin on a weirdly beautiful roadtrip which ends kind of ominously.

I found Woyzek with Klaus Kinski much more painful to take, more obvious suicide-motivation-material, the tale of a perpetually humiliated 'good soldier' who takes his punishment like a man, pressure building till he finally explodes, a terrifying bummer of a spectacle to behold.

Brilliant summation, Cabin.

cool.. I am gonna hafta check this out

Music is the disturbed person's insane thoughts being translated into sanity.

And only Werner Herzog can make a documentary about people spending hours putting out a fire only to reignite it at the end and call it science fiction.

I think it is the eternal appeal of the martyr.  He died for us.  For all of us poor lost tortured souls.  It elevates the cause.  Our pain has reached its apex by proxy and all we have to do is evoke the name of the martyr and others will know our suffering.


Cobain fans?

Personally I thought he suffered enough living with Courtney Love.

Courtney's a cool chick. Really. He was passive-aggressively the controller in that situation.

Why people look at their relationship and see Courtney calling the shots is beyond me.

Since when was Cobain some controllable dweeboid?

Rivers Cuomo's getting a reputation for some eccentric behaviour. It's not an allure, but it certainly adds to the fun of following the band.

I should point out that I got into the Beach Boys via the hits (which I totally loved and still do) and only later did the whole Pet Sounds/SMiLE trip. When I got into SMiLE, the whole myth part was a draw to me, but I really got caught up in it once I read LLVS and got into the timespace of the band at the time. It was how Brian was so pumped about everything he was doing and having fun and being creative with his buddies that I related to the situation. Sure, he was being a bit off the wall, but he wasn't holding back and, I should emphasize this, he was having FUN. So for me, it's not that he "went insane" or anything, it's the sheer unbridled creativity to which I was drawn. The fact that the music was beautiful just made it work.

(http://image.com.com/mp3/images/cover/200/drd800/d805/d80528q8156.jpg)

The long-form video Todd made to go with that LP is a great exposition on this subject.

Hell yeah.  He's the same guy who broke up with a girlfriend over the radio.

I've never heard about that.

Which girlfriend was it?

All i've read about his breakups were that he was crushed and would randomly vomit at the thought of the girl and the split.

Question:  What do you people suppose the rate of male to female "tortured self-destructive possibly insane" artists?  I'm struggling to think of any female versions of, say, Syd Barrett.

Marianne Faithfull, Judee Sill.

There we go.

Fiona Apple, kinda-sorta but not any more.

Sandy Denny? Nellie McKay (like, maybe if she died)?

It was Mary Lou Lord, his girlfriend before Courtney Love.

I don't think people dig their music because they're "insane" or "self-destructive," its because they made outsider music that other misfits can relate to. If the music sucked there wouldn't be any interest in them, it has to be relatable. Not everyone who is a loner is a "genius" but I think they can appreciate where the songwriter is coming from.

Whitney Houston? (like maybe if she made music like she makes tabloid covers, or still had a career even. No tears or admissions leak out of her:
Better examples. Billie Holliday and Judy Garland were classic pre-rock tortured torch singers whose real life troubles were part of their late career act, persona, popular appeal

 

Well its been building up inside of me
For oh I don't know how long
Deep down inside
I can't stop thinking
Everything is going wrong
When she looks in my eyes
She doesn't realize
But she says "It's not you, baby"
It's not me, baby
I would never take my own life
It's not me, baby

I guess I should've kept my mind shut
When the voices said, "You've not got long"
At first I turned a deaf ear to them
While my friends warned me that drugs were wrong
I can't stand being alive
So I just wanna die
Though she says "It's not you, baby"
It's not me, baby
I would never take my own life
It's not me, baby

Now all the doctors come and ask me
If I've shut the door on suicide
Psychosis causes an imbalance
And prevents you seeing from outside
Now drugs are history
The rest is up to me me
She was right: "It's not you, baby"
It's not me, baby
I would never take my own life
It's not me, baby