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Freddie Mercury Wasn’t Nearly
As Gay As You Are

November 24, 2011 By Joe Allen

© Brandt Hardin

You call Freddie a faggot.  You think his mustache was pure trash.  You are disgusted by the glans flexed in his spandex. You dig into the details of Mercury’s mercurial libido, but I’ll tell you right now that being that concerned about a rock star’s sex life is fucking gay, man. Vicarious hairy ass.

You fantasize about the sloppy meat between a superstar’s sheets like an imaginary groupie choking on phantom fellatio.  You feed on rumors like a junky at a pain clinic fire sale.  You’re a bottom-feeder sniffing at the hem of a musical Messiah’s garment, cowering in the shadows of his ball sack.  Not only would Freddie Mercury not fuck you, he wouldn’t be flattered that you care who he fucked.  So call him a faggot if you want to.  No one denies he was gay—he was the frontman for QUEEN, for Chrissakes.  He just wasn’t as gay as you are.

That doesn’t mean that Mercury never slept with women.  Men don’t grow mustaches like that and not get down with the ladies at some point.  He probably had a hundred women, which is ninety-nine more than you will—if we count self-administered handjobs, anyway.

Reading through the quotes in Freddie Mercury: His Life in His Own Words, it becomes clear that the singer was passionate about women, especially the only love of his life, Mary Austin.

“I’m gay as a daffodil, dears.  But I couldn’t fall in love with a man the way I could with a girl…”

“I treat Mary as my common-law wife and we’re getting on fine…We believe in each other, so fuck everybody else.”

Maybe fucking everybody else was the problem, because Freddie certainly did a lot of that—men, women, midgets, wombats, God only knows what else, who cares?  It’s none of your business.  Stop snooping.

After seven years of living together, he and Mary called it quits.  But Freddie would carry on (carry oooon…) because nothing really matters…

“Sometimes a good friend is much more valuable than a lover.  Apart from Mary, I don’t have any real friends.”

I’m sure his buddies didn’t appreciate that, and you can be damn sure that his hairdresser and lover of over a decade wore a squished up sour face after hearing it.  Jim Hutton lived with Mercury for the last six years of his life, remaining by his bedside like a loyal pet, and yet Freddie had the gall to say: “If I go first, I’m going to leave everything to [Mary Austin].  Nobody else gets a penny—except my cats.”  And Freddie followed through, like a true-to-life, thuper thweet, find-em-fuck-em-and-give-em-AIDS rock star.  Freddie lived life on his own flamboyant terms.  Fuck everybody else.

Yeah, Freddie performed at Bob Geldof’s globally-broadcast, egalitarian charity ball in 1985.  But Freddie didn’t get guilt-tripped into doing Live Aid.  Those starving Ethiopians couldn’t piss on his fabulous parade.  Causes are so gay.  No, he played Live Aid because playing the biggest humanitarian concert of the century is just sooo Freddie Mercury.

“To be honest, let’s face it, all us rock stars still want to be in the limelight and this is going to showcase us.  Let’s be open about it…it’s going to be a worldwide audience, an all over simultaneous broadcast…I doubt there is one artist that’s going to appear who hasn’t realized that fact…

“Even if I didn’t do it, the poverty would still be there.  It’s something that will always be there.  We’ll do all we can do to help because it’s a wonderful thing.  But as far as I’m concerned, I’m doing it out of pride.”

It was all about entertainment.  Left wing musicians hauling millions off to their mansions or right wing writers peddling psuedo-empowerment to the servant classes—Mercury was beyond such hypocrisy and pretention.  Having a message is for fags.

“We think a show should be a spectacle and we’ve been slagged off in the press for our flamboyant stage show.  But that’s the whole point…

“I feel incredibly strong on stage…The adrenaline’s there, you feel like the devil and it’s wonderful, absolutely wonderful.  But I know in myself that I would never misuse it…I’m much too wonderful for that, darlings!”

Mercury’s honest appraisal of his exalted status was refreshing to realistic rock fans.  This was an age that viewed the martyrdom of John Lennon as a precursor to a cultural apocalypse, a generation bred to worship anyone with a TV face and a microphone.  Mercury was a shallow breath of fresh air.

“I’m not the Messiah or anything—I don’t want to preach to [the audience]…My job is not to teach them, my job is to make music.  I don’t want to change their lives overnight, I don’t want to involve the audience in peace messages or anything like that.  It’s escapism…”

Queen was the rare result of talent, will, and greed.  They crafted songs with the care of a jeweler cutting a diamond, producing both snappy hits and epic ballads.  The audience could never be too big, the lights could never be too bright, the showmanship could never be too superficial.

“I was once thinking of being carried on stage by Nubian slaves and being fanned by them…But where to find a Nubian slave?”

Freddie wasn’t about to take himself too seriously.  He was all laughter and leather.  Topless tarts and bottomless mic stands.  Macho men and mustaches.  Overbites and undergarments.  White tights and spotlights.  Like fat bottom girls, he made the rockin’ world go round.

It made him miserable in the end.  He became distrustful of the hanger-on hobnobbers who slipped into his life just to slurp on his fame like psychic vampires fighting over an infected used tampon.

Freddie had risen to the height of social approval and material wealth.  He had an eight-bedroom Victorian-style mansion built in Kensington, West London.  Marble floors and mahogany staircases.  Shopping sprees to Harrods, Cartier, and Asprey.  Lalique and Galle vases.  Midgets serving trays of cocaine.  You couldn’t attract more rats with all the cheese in Wisconsin.

“It’s like I’m handicapped, because people immediately go for my so-called stage persona.  No one loves the real me.  Inside, they’re all in love with my fame and stardom.”

Freddie became more and more emotionally isolated and shackled by the cold chains of betrayal.  He trusted no one further than he could smack them with his cock, so that wound up being the only personal connection he could hope for.  The sad part is, his sordid love life is all you ass-hammers even care about.

“My sex drive is enormous.  I sleep with men, women, cats—you name it.  I’ll go to bed with anything!  My bed is so huge it can comfortably sleep six.”

Does that titillate you?  Captivate you?  Are you happy now that you’ve had a peek beneath his sheets?  I’ll bet you want to know who now.  What are their names?  What positions did he prefer?  What did his lovers look like?  What did they smell like?  Did their wiry mustaches ever get stuck together like velcro?

You ask too many questions, and Freddie was never one for answering questions, anyway.  Questions are fucking queer.  In the last years of Freddie’s life, people were always asking probing personal questions.  Why doesn’t he play shows anymore?  What happened to the wild parties?  Why does he look so unhealthy?  Is he love sick?  On drugs?  HIV positive?

Freddie had nothing to say about it.  He became somewhat reclusive. He “stopped having sex and started growing tulips.”  The clock ticked by slowly.  Inquiring minds wanted to know.

Then suddenly, on November 23, 1991, Mercury came clean with a public statement that he indeed had AIDS.  A thousand gay assholes simultaneously slammed shut in abject terror.  The next day, Freddie was dead.

I know, I know, you say he got what he deserved.  Promiscuity leads to decadence.  The wages of sin is death.  Sodomy causes pain in the end.  God hates fags.  And maybe you’re right.  AIDS is a nasty way to go, generally reserved for certain proclivities, so that has to mean something.  Ask yourself this, though:

If God kills queers because he hates their man-loving ways, and none of us live forever, then does God hate us all, each for our own special reasons?

Death cuts every one of us down, but life only raises up so many rock heroes.  How ironic that Freddie Mercury became one of the brightest stars in the world because he was so fantastically flaming, and yet you’ll just sneer from the sidelines because you’re so fucking gay.

[In memory of Seth Putnam]

© 2011 Joseph Allen

Queen — “Another One Bites the Dust”
1981

Filed Under: Martyrology, Most Exalted Tagged With: , ,

Michael Hutchence:
Don’t Hold Your Breath

November 22, 2011 By Joe Allen

© Brandt Hardin

If there is such a thing as too much pussy, then Michael Hutchence must have gotten it. Remember the topless girl with the stunning green eyes from Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Games” video? Hutchence hit that. Or the ghostly girl with the ruby lips singing in Nick Cave’s “Where the Wild Roses Grow”? Hutchence hit that, too. Television interviewers, supermodels, pop starlets, and an endless stream of groupies playfully dubbed “INXS-ories”—Michael took primal lust to extremes that the average porn addict couldn’t approach vicariously.

Michael was on that sweet love-makin’ sadomasochist mack daddy on crack tip. He tied them up and tortured them with pleasure. He snorted drugs off their toe-nails and tongued them down til they wanted to die. He probably ate grapes off their butt cheeks. They don’t call it a “Hutchence steamer” for nothin’. Described by those who loved him as warm and charming, the smooth-talking Australian had a habit of charming his friend’s lovers into a warm bed. Just a day in the life of a dirty rock star, until the paparazzi caught Hutchence doing the wrong man dirty.

Bob Geldof was a saint, canonized by the media and knighted by the Queen. From 1985 on, he could do no wrong. That year he organized Live Aid, a multi-venue benefit concert to relieve famine-stricken Ethiopia, which was performed in London and Philadelphia and broadcast across the planet. Bob and his wife-to-be sat next to Prince Charles and Princess Diana in Wembley Stadium while nearly two billion viewers received his all-star pop showcase via satellite, including Bob Dylan and Queen, along with the crushing guilt that comes with eating a burger while Africans starve to death. The event raised upward of £50 million that day, much of which inadvertently went to fund Ethiopia’s genocidal Communist dictator Mingitsu Haile Miriam and his guerilla army. All saints must suffer, and such an ironic misappropriation must have ground Geldof’s gears, but not nearly as bad as the humiliating and highly publicized cuckoldry inflicted by his reckless wife ten years later.

Bob began romancing Paula Yates when she was barely eighteen, back when she was just a little fan girl following his band, the Boomtown Rats. Thinking himself to be older and wiser—eight years to be exact—he struggled to keep her wild oats out of the feeding troughs of the rich and famous. After their protracted courtship resulted in a daughter, they were finally wed in a $50 Las Vegas Marry-Mart. Paula would bear Bob three daughters in all, naming them Fifi, Peaches, and Pixie. And that was before she started getting high.

Aside from authoring self-help books on motherhood and posing for Penthouse, Paula’s greatest claim to fame was as a UK music television personality. She was highly regarded for her engaging interviews with pop stars on the ascent. It’s only natural that she’d develop a little crush here and there.

Michael Hutchence’s handsome photograph suddenly appeared on the Geldof family refrigerator after Paula interviewed him on The Tube in 1985. But Bob was a trusting husband. He kept his cool. Nine years later, Bob’s suspicions—and the rest of the world’s—were finally roused during Paula’s sultry “on the bed” interview with Hutchence for The Big Breakfast. The jealousy drove Bob bonkers, and after Paula indulged a few too many late nights out, he confronted Michael at a party, telling the star to leave his wife alone. Paula denied everything when she found out. She even insisted that Bob call Hutchence and apologize, which Bob did reluctantly, his gloomy penis staring down at his feet.

The chemistry between Michael and Paula couldn’t have been more obvious, but it took front page photos of the cheating couple leaving the Halkin Hotel together to tear the wool from Bob’s bleary eyes. It was Sunday morning, February 11, 1995, and Geldof was pissed off. Two and a half years later, Michael was found naked and dead.

It had been a wild ride up to that fateful night. While INXS’ music may have been somewhat bland and forgettable, Michael’s performances exploded with such slick sexual savagery that every guy in the audience wanted to be him and every girl wanted to be with him—hence the Hutchence curse. He also wrote a poignant pop track addressing the nasty business of human nature called “Devil Inside,” so stop calling him a mediocre merry-maker, you Aussie-hating asshole. The international market may only have loved Hutchence passionately for the album Kick, but Australia remained loyal to their star while the rest of the world jeered.

The whole business with Bob and Paula had been nasty from the start. One alpha altruist, two chatty cheaters, three cartoon-named babies, and an army of tabloid photographers with film to spare. It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like for Michael and Paula to have their sordid lives documented and devoured by the yellow press and their insatiable public, from that first hotel headline to the Geldofs’ bizarre divorce proceedings (which left Paula and Michael living in Bob’s house, and Bob living in Michael’s old apartment) to the birth of Michael and Paula’s daughter (named Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence—no kidding) to the police investigations after their nanny found opium in the crazy couple’s house to Paula’s sorry suicide attempts to that iconic Brit Awards moment in ’96 when Michael presented the Best Band award to Noel Gallagher, who sneered back, “I’d just like to say that fucking has-beens shouldn’t be giving awards to gonna-bes!” It’s no wonder Michael was always punching out paparazzi photographers—it must have been the only enjoyable pastime left to a man numbed to life’s little pleasures.

A random encounter in 1992, years before all the trouble started, may shed some light on Michael’s twisted peanut. He had been walking in Amsterdam with his supermodel girlfriend on his arm, and stepped in front of a taxi. The cabbie had clearly been having a bad day when suddenly this arrogant, swaggering rock star type walks in front of his cab at a leisurely pace, fucking up the driver’s schedule and sporting a highlighted perm to boot. The cabbie snapped, got out of his taxi, and shoved Michael to the sidewalk. Michael cracked his head on the concrete, causing minor brain damage. In the blink of an eye, the natural sensualist had lost his sense of taste and smell. Perhaps, as is common in such cases, he homed in on other senses to compensate.

It was November 22, 1997—the 35th deathday of JFK—and Michael was having a distressing night in Australia. His rock n’ roll rollercoaster had begun in Sydney’s dive bars two decades before, taken him around the world in a death-defying spiral, and left him wrecked in a Ritz Carlton hotel room in the same city on the eve of a small venue tour, bringing him full circle. Besides partying with a local couple, he’d been on the phone all night, feeling sorry for himself to Paula, chatting with a new lover in LA, and going off on Geldoff about child custody issues. By early morning, Hutchence was lonely and fucked up. He’d consumed a cocktail that included cocaine, champagne, Valium, and Prozac, but that’s not what killed him.

Michael was the type who needed excitement to calm his nerves. He could have called a hooker that night, but how boring. Maybe he could call two—twice as boring. He could go down to the street and start a fist fight, or arrange to go skydiving, or maybe just pick the phone back up and prank call at random. Boooriiing.

A belt can be used for a lot of things. Put it through your belt loops, and your trousers won’t fall down to your ankles. Double it over, and you’ve got a kinky disciplinary tool. Tighten it above your elbow, and you’ve got the perfect tie-off for a soothing shot of heroin. Slip it around your neck, and suddenly bold new horizons open up.

Michael’s body was discovered in his hotel room by a dumbfounded maid. His leather belt had been tightened around his neck and tied to the door handle. He was as naked as Adam in Eden, but not nearly so innocent. According to Hutchence’s brother, forensic investigators found small amounts of semen on Michael’s body, indicating an auto-erotic asphyxiation sesh gone horribly wrong. Despite the coroner’s verdict of suicide, there is every reason to believe that out of desperation for one sweet moment of relief, Michael decided to choke himself while tugging one out, then suddenly lost control of the enterprise.

Earlier in the day he’d told an interviewer for Adelaide’s Sunday Mail:

“The press, especially in England, makes a construct of a human, and then they either do two things with that person. They make them beyond human, or they dehumanize them…

“See, it’s against the law to destroy Jews, blacks, people for religious causes. The law and Parliament have stopped discrimination like that. All we have left is celebrity, and every society has to kick a dog, it’s a fact. Someone to raise and someone to burn. It’s human nature…”

After gorging oneself on the all-you-can-eat buffet presented to superstars, the only thing left to do is eat the silverware and flash a broken smile to the public. That strangled gurgle heard around the world was Michael saying, “Cheese!”

© 2011 Joseph Allen

INXS — “Devil Inside”
1987

If there is such a thing as too much pussy, then Michael Hutchence must have gotten it. Remember the topless girl with the stunning green eyes from Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Games” video? Hutchence hit that. Or the ghostly girl with the ruby lips singing in Nick Cave’s “Where the Wild Roses Grow”? Hutchence hit that, too. Television interviewers, supermodels, pop starlets, and an endless stream of groupies playfully dubbed “INXS-ories”—Michael took the satisfaction of primal lust to extremes that the average man couldn’t approach vicariously in porno-stacked warehouse and a pack of bubblegum. Michael was on that sweet love-makin’ sadomasochist mack daddy on crack tip. He tied them up and tortured them with pleasure. He snorted drugs off their toe-nails and tongued them down til they wanted to die. He ate food out of their butt cracks. And they don’t call it a “Hutchence steamer” for nothin’. Described by those who loved him as warm and charming, the smooth-talking Australian had a habit of charming his friend’s lovers into a warm bed. Just a day in the life of a dirty rock star, until the paparazzi caught Hutchence doing the wrong man dirty.

Bob Geldof was a saint, canonized by the media and knighted by the Queen. From 1985 on, he could do no wrong. That year he organized Live Aid, a multi-venue benefit concert to relieve famine-stricken Ethiopia, which was played in London and Philadelphia and broadcast across the planet. Bob and his wife-to-be sat next to Prince Charles and Princess Di in Wembley Stadium while nearly two billion viewers received his all-star pop showcase via satellite, including Bob Dylan and Queen, along with the crushing guilt that comes with eating a burger while Africans starve to death. The event raised upward of £50 million that day, much of which inadvertantly went to fund Ethiopia’s genocidal Communist dictator Mingitsu Haile Miriam and his guerilla army. All saints must suffer, and such an ironic misappropriation must have ground Geldof’s gears . But not nearly as bad as the humiliating and highly publicized cuckolding inflicted by his reckless wife ten years later.

Bob began romancing Paula Yates when she was barely eighteen, back when she was just a little fan girl following his band, the Boomtown Rats. Thinking himself to be older and wiser—eight years to be exact—he struggled to keep her wild oats out of the feeding troughs of the rich and famous. After their protracted courtship resulted in a daughter, they were finally wed in a $50 Las Vegas Marry-Mart. Paula would bear Bob three daughters in all, naming them Fifi, Peaches, and Pixie. And that was before she started getting high.

Aside from authoring self-help books on motherhood and posing for Penthouse, Paula’s greatest claim to fame was as a UK music television personality. She was highly regarded for her engaging interviews with pop stars on the ascent. It’s only natural that she’d develop a little crush or two.

Michael Hutchence’s handsome photograph suddenly appeared on the Geldof family refrigerator after Paula interviewed him on The Tube in 1985. But Bob was a trusting husband. He kept his cool. Nine years later, Bob’s suspicions—and the rest of the world’s—were finally roused during Paula’s “on the bed” interview with Hutchence for The Big Breakfast. The jealousy drove Bob bonkers, and after Paula indulged a few too many late nights out, he confronted Michael at a party, telling the star to leave his wife alone. Paula denied everything when she found out. She even insisted that Bob call Hutchence and apologize, which Bob did reluctantly, his gloomy penis staring down at his feet.

The chemistry between Michael and Paula couldn’t have been more obvious, but it took front page photos of the cheating couple leaving the Halkin Hotel together to tear the wool from Bob’s bleary eyes. It was Sunday morning, February 11, 1995, and Geldof was pissed off. Two and a half years later, Michael was found naked and dead.

It had been a wild ride up to that fateful night. While the music may have been somewhat bland and forgettable, Michael’s performances with INXS exploded with such slick sexual savagery, every guy in the audience wanted to be him and every girl wanted to be with him, hence the Hutchence curse. He also wrote a poignant pop track addressing the nasty business of human nature, “The Devil Inside,” and that has to count for something. So stop calling him a mediocre merry-maker. The international market only loved Hutchence passionately for the album Kick, but Australia remained loyal to him to the bitter end.

The whole business with Bob and Paula had been nasty from the start. One altruistic alpha male, two chatty cheaters, three cartoon-named babies, and an army of tabloid photographers with film to spare. It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like for Michael and Paula to have their sordid lives documented and devoured by the yellow press and their insatiable public, from their first front page leaving the hotel together to the Geldof’s bizarre divorce proceedings (which left Paula with Bob’s house, and Bob living in Michael’s old apartment) to the birth of Michael and Paula’s daughter (named Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence—no kidding) to the police investigations after their nanny found opium in the crazy couple’s house to Paula’s sorry suicide attempts to that iconic Brit Awards moment when Michael presented the Best Band award to Noel Gallagher, who sneered back, “I’d just like to say that fucking has-beens shouldn’t be giving awards to gonna-bes!” It’s no wonder Michael was always punching out paparrazi photographers—it must have been the only enjoyable pastime left to a man numb to life’s little pleasures.

A random encounter in 1992, years before all the trouble started, may shed some light on Michael’s twisted peanut. He had been walking in Amsterdam with his supermodel girlfriend on his arm, and stepped in front of a taxi. The cabbie had clearly been having a bad day, when suddenly this arrogant, swaggering rock star type walks in front of his cab at a leisurely pace, fucking up the driver’s schedule and sporting a highlighted perm to boot. The cabbie snapped, got out of his taxi, and shoved Michael to the sidewalk. Michael cracked his head on the concrete, causing minor brain damage. In the blink of an eye, the natural born sensualist had lost his sense of taste and smell. Perhaps, as is common in such cases, he homed in on other senses to compensate.

It was November 22, 1997—the 35th deathday of JFK—and Michael was having a distressing night in Australia. His rock n’ roll rollercoaster had begun in Sydney’s dive bars two decades before, took him around the world in a death-defying spiral, and left him wrecked in a Ritz Carlton hotel room in the same city on the eve of a come-back tour, bringing him full circle. Between partying with a local couple, he’d been on the phone all night, feeling sorry for himself with Paula, chatting with a new lover in LA, and going off on Geldoff about his refusal to allow his daughters to go on vacation with Michael and Paula. By early morning, Hutchence was lonely and fucked up. He’d consumed a cocktail that included cocaine, champagne, Valium, and Prozac, but that’s not what killed him.

Earlier in the day he’d told Adelaide’s Sunday Mail:

“The press, especially in England, makes a construct of a human, and then they either do two things with that person. They make them beyond human, or they dehumanize them…

“See, it’s against the law to destroy Jews, blacks, people for religious causes. The law and Paliament have stopped discrimination like that. All we have left is celebrity, and every society has to kick a dog, it’s a fact. Someone to raise and someone to burn. It’s human nature…”

A belt can be used for a lot of things. Put it through your belt loops, and your pants won’t fall down to your ankles. Double it over, and you’ve got a kinky disciplinary tool. Tighten it above your elbow, and you’ve got the perfect tie-off for a soothing shot of heroin. Slip it around your neck, and suddenly bold new horizons open up.

Michael’s body was discovered in his hotel room by a dumbfounded maid. His leather belt had been tightened around his neck and tied to the door handle. He was naked as Adam, but not nearly so innocent. According to Hutchence’s brother, forensic investigators found small amounts of semen on Michael’s body, indicating an auto-erotic asphyxiation sesh gone horribly wrong. Despite the coroner’s verdict of suicide, there is every reason to believe that out of desperation for one sweet moment of relief, Michael decided to choke himself while he tugged one out, then suddenly lost control of the enterprise.

After gorging oneself on life’s sensual buffet for so long, the only thing left to do is eat the silverware and smile at the.world with broken teeth.

Filed Under: Martyrology, Most Exalted Tagged With: , ,

ODB, STDs, and Government Cheese

November 13, 2011 By Joe Allen

© Brandt Hardin

Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s slurring, incoherent “singin’ rappin’” rhymes hit the mic so hard, you have to wipe oozing spittle off your face after listening to his deranged tracks. He spoke the tough truth from the mean streets, delving into the dark crevices of ghetto crackhouses and bitch’s booties, coming out the other side covered in doodoo brown and flashing a steel grille grin all the while. Some believe that the big “G” Government took notice and were highly pissed about it.

Raised in the housing projects of Brooklyn, ODB broke out with the “world domination” scheme masterminded by his cousins, RZA and GZA, whose hip hop exploits are succinctly described by Dirty’s biographer, Jaime Lowe:

“The foundation of Wu-Tang is in its lore, its urban mythology, its appropriation of kung fu, chess, Buddhism, Islam, bible studies, cartoons, comics, Staten Island; anything they came across was woven into an intricate web of culture and identification and a constructed community that bordered on cult. They made themselves a world when the projects didn’t provide. And they sold that world to this other world (a primarily suburban one) in rhymes”

During the 1998 Grammy Awards, Ol’ Dirty Bastard stepped all over singer/songwriter Shawn Colvin’s shining moment when he stormed the stage to declare the Wu Tang Clan’s noble purpose to the world:

“I don’t know how ya’ll see it, but when it comes to the children, Wu-Tang is for the children. We teach the children.”

The day before, MTV broke the news that Ol’ Dirty Bastard had witnessed a gruesome car wreck in New York and immediately rallied his homies to lift a vehicle off of four year-old Maati Lavell, whom he reportedly visited in the hospital during her recovery. Perhaps he imparted the same sort of Nation of Islam-inspired fatherly advice that he gave during his relatively lucid if typically rambling “barefoot in Brooklyn” interview:

“’The black man is God’…This is for the children…To all my little bastards out there, my bad bastards, keep being bad, just make sure you get a good education in school. You ain’t gotta tell yo’ teacher off, tell yo’ teacher off with education…Bomb his ass! Know’m'sayin’? White devil muthafuckas…Yo, but um, no, when I say white devil, I’m just sayin’ that, you know, you got some good devils, you got some bad devils, just like you got some good black men, you got some bad devil black men, know’m'sayin’, ’cause those black man is God, we know that, the white man come from the black man, so, that’s what created the devil, so we know that—Yo, where Panther wit that get high?…”

Aside from the millions of youngsters who bought Wu-Tang’s albums, Ol’ Dirty sired thirteen seeds of his own, whom he introduced to the world during an MTV News segment in which they rode in a limousine with their mother and father to collect food stamps. Typical white devil middle-class Americans might think the rapper was an enigma for taking government assistance after receiving a $40,000 advance from his record company, but Dirty’s reasoning seems obvious enough:

“Why wouldn’t you want to get free money?!”

Considering the amount of dough he would drop on defense attorneys over the next few years—including OJ Simpson first lawyer, Robert Shapiro—it’s clear that ODB needed all the cash he could get.

Wu-Tang Forever was released in 1997 and sold over 600,000 copies on its first day and over 4 million by year’s end. The Ol’ Dirty Bastard had already seen his 1995 solo album Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version earn a Gold certification, and with the release of Wu-Tang Forever he was flush with money and “lookin’ for new girls to put babies in.” He took on the moniker “Big Baby Jesus” and launched a new line of clothing. He bought a new grille with gleaming fangs. He also incinerated hard cocaine like he had to burn the evidence.

Given his outspoken suspicion of “the Government,” I imagine that more than one hub got sucked down in one lung-full for fear that the shadowy agents peering back through his cracked motel blinds would soon kick down the door. ODB’s views on the Government went well beyond the persecution of drug users, though, as he explained to TRL viewers across the world in 1998:

“Everybody’s scared of the Government, know’m'sayin’, because they killed Tupac, and they killed Biggie Smalls. I don’t care what y’all say, that’s my seein’…”

The crowd laughed, but Jesus wasn’t joking.  Carson Daily must have known that the veil had been torn.  A ghetto star had just stated on national television that the Government assassinated two high profile hip hop stars, presumably to keep them from uniting black people against the system.  Could there be a more sure-fire way to join them?  But Big Baby Jesus (aka Osirus [sic], aka Dirt McGirt) was unafraid.  He had provided a safe place for these martyr’s souls to occupy, as he explained to a Swedish interviewer during Wu-Tang’s world tour:

“Notorious ain’t dead, Tupac ain’t dead, they exist within me…they came to me and said, ‘Dirty, Dirty, wake up, wake up, yo man.’ I said, ‘Well come on in!’

“So they not dead. They live in me now, you know, they right here…that’s why they call me Osirus…’cause I went to the next dimension…you see, I already mastered the human lessons…I had to go to the other dimension where it’s all thought, you know, we call it the Land of Nobody…Tupac is right here, and Biggie Smalls right here, they just on my shoulders, you know, you just gotta see ‘em…”

Is that why the authorities were constantly harassing ODB to the end of his days? Perhaps the Government was trying to capture and silence the incorporeal hip hop entities that It had endeavored so stringently to snuff out. Why don’t other people see it?  I mean, just think about it, man.  Connect the dots.  Open your eyes.  Read between the lines.  See through the smokescreen.  Freak the fuck out.

ODB had only been in trouble here and there before the release of his solo album: petty convictions for assault and failure to pay child support.  Then suddenly, after his rise to stardom in 1997, the criminal charges were relentless: attempted assault against his wife, shoplifting sneakers, two counts of criminal threatening, shooting at police officers, driving without a license, possession of a bulletproof vest as a felon, possession of marijuana, and the coup de grâce in 1999, possession of twenty vials of crack cocaine. It’s pretty clear that shadowy forces were out to destroy him.

Apparently the Government did not control every government institution, as some of the charges were dropped.  But ODB’s conviction for crack in 2000 got him sentenced to six months in rehab. Ol’ Dirty Bastard was never one to be confined, though, and four months into his (mind control?) treatment he jumped the fence. One month later, the police were called when an unruly crowd gathered at a McDonald’s in Philadelphia. Officers found Dirty signing autographs in the parking lot. He was extradited to New York and sentenced to four years in Clinton Correctional Facility—the same maximum security prison that Tupac served time in.

Prison is no fun for anyone—except for agoraphobic sadists and man-loving masochists, of course—but the experience completely destroyed the Ol’ Dirty Bastard. His leg was broken in an attack by inmates (or was it the guards?) Some say his jaw and nose were broken as well. An interviewer for Blender magazine found Dirty tense and understandably paranoid behind bars, unsure where the next assault might come from. New York’s Daily News reported that ODB was diagnosed as schizophrenic at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center before being locked up, so the cold concrete and leering faces must have been a terrifying realization of his darkest delusions. Add to that the unquenchable libido of a man reputed to wrap gauze around the friction burns on his dick before donning a condom, and it is easy to see how incarceration would break Dirty’s mind and spirit.

“You know, I don’t know whether Ol’ Dirty Bastard is even here any more,” ODB told Blender before returning to his cell. “I think he’s gone.”

Dirty was finally released in 2003, but friends and family say that he was never the same after that. During his first show at the Knitting Factory in Manhattan he froze up completely, staring at the pale-face hipsters in the audience with tears streaming down his cheeks. Subsequent shows were not much better. Offstage he was quieter, subdued, detached.  He was prescribed antipsychotic medication which causes all of the body’s fat cells to swell, blowing the rapper up like he’d been tapped with an air pump, face, fists, and all, and after laying awake for three years in prison, it seemed that all he wanted to do was sleep.  Of course, none of that stopped ODB from chasing the ladies.

“Every day, like probably three times a day, I jerked my dick off so much that the prisoners was actually sayin’ ‘Yo, Dirty, chill the fuck out!’, know’m'sayin’, because I couldn’t help it—every bitch I saw on TV, her ass looked as funny to me…I’m into all asshole. I like it ’cause it’s tinier than the pussyhole, you know, it’s so tiny it’s like tiny as a clitoris, so when I…get the feeling of licking a York Peppermint Patty, it’s a sensation…”

One gets the feeling that Dirty’s public claim that he “got burnt two times by gonorrhea” is a bit of an understatement.

Despite his continual mental breakdown, the future held at least some promise for the star. Dirty began working on new recordings for Roc-A-Fella Records, was offered half a million up front, and even moved out of his mother’s apartment into his own place. But neither his recording obligations nor policing by his manager and parole officer could deafen Dirty’s ears to the siren song of shiny pearls bubbling in a Cho’ Boy-stuffed glass rose tube. The Government was coming for him anyway, so why should it matter? He explained his dilemma during a promotional documentary recorded before his death, with his hooded eyes moving independently of one another:

“Of course, the Government has it out for me, because…see I’m a man-made product…You made me! Yundastand wha’m'sayin’?…You got your government here [makes sweeping gesture to the perceptible cosmos], it’s a world of one thing and I happen to be another thing that’s governed, too. And I guess now it’s my time…

“It’s time to move on. It’s time for Ol’ Dirty Bastard to not exist no more. It’s time for a new Ol’ Dirty Bastard, you know, a baby Ol’ Dirty Bastard…and that’s just how it is. The Government is out to assassinate me and get it over with.”

On November 13, 2004, nine days before his parole would have ended and two days before his 36th birthday, Dirty spent the afternoon smoking crack and eating opiates. He wound up at the RZA’s recording studio, 36 Records in Manhattan, where he collapsed in the lounge. EMS workers arrived within half an hour, but Dirty was pronounced dead at the scene. The Government had finally gotten to him.

Some critical observers deride the ODB as a cynical one-man minstrel show who intentionally played up to the white man’s warped prejudices toward blacks—a callous, slovenly rake who went out of his way to become the cartoonish embodiment of every demeaning racial slur.  But I don’t see a fundamental difference between ODB and any other celebrity whose excess and self-destruction become fodder for public amusement.

Others applaud him for his sincerity, and for rubbing the legacy of slavery and subsequent racial oppression in the face of indifferent whites.  Rather than regard him as a trainwreck of poor decision-making, they see a tragic victim of the system—the Government.

Steve Huey states in his allmusic.com biography: “The saddest part of his story is that, in the end, the only person he truly harmed was himself.”

So ODB’s story would have been less sad if he’d taken a few dozen others down with him? If you say so, Steve.

I would think the saddest part of the story involves the people that Dirty left behind. Over three thousand people gathered at the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn to pay their respects to the Ol’ Dirty Bastard (aka “Rusty Jones” to his devastated mother, aka “Daddy” to his thirteen kids, aka “Brother” to his friends.) Millions more remember him fondly as an artistic pioneer—the rapper whose style had no father, and yet he became the father of Crack Rap. As RZA put it, “His growl, his voice, and his delivery was one of the most unorthodox voices in hip-hop.”

Personally, I am inclined toward Dirty’s philosophical view of himself, which can be read as a sort of self-absorbed self-elegy, well-suited for a rock star martyr:

“Ol’ Dirty Bastard was something that was created from God…God created Ol’ Dirty Bastard: his walk, his talk, his movement, his step, his feet, his everything…his smell, his breath of life, his heartbeat…God did it. Know’m'sayin’?”

© 2011 Joseph Allen

Ol’ Dirty Bastard — “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”
1995

Filed Under: Martyrology, Most Exalted Tagged With: , ,