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Bob Marley Died Dreaming
of Babylon on Fire

May 11, 2011 By Joe Allen

© Brandt Hardin

Bob Marley shined a ray of hope upon the starved and battered denizens of the Third World with his soothing reggae rhythms. The singer rose up from the brutal Jamaican ghetto to emerge on the international music scene as a charismatic voice of conscience, shedding light on the bitter legacy of European colonialism to the shame of well-fed “baldheads.” He sang an apocalyptic song of freedom, tapping Rasta prophecies that promised the return of Africans to their homeland, Zion, and the total destruction of decadent Western society, or Babylon. As the tumultuous 1970s drew to a close, Marley and his fellow Rastafari were certain that the end was nigh.

Bob Marley’s world ended in a Miami hospital bed on May 11, 1981, while the First World’s marketing gurus captured and framed his image in ganja green, blood red, and merchandising gold. Despite the best intentions of international charities and the impassioned diatribes of pot-smoking college students, thirty years after his passing the Third World continues to groan under the weight of commercial exploitation and crushing poverty. Perhaps Jah smoked one spliff too many and forgot all about Armageddon.

If Heaven is peace and plenty, then sweltering Caribbean ghettos are Hell on earth. Even sheltered tourists can’t help but notice the desperation and violence that seethes beyond the putting green. Jamaica’s African slaves were officially set free in 1838, which meant that masses of peasants had no jobs and the white aristocracy had little vested interest in providing adequate food or shelter. The 20th century saw a few enterprising individuals—mostly foreign investors—turning a profit by mining bauxite and growing bananas, while the rest of the island’s 2.5 million inhabitants were left grasping for dreams and submachine guns.

Bob Marley was born in the tiny Jamaican village of Nine Mile in 1945, the son of a poor, earth-hued woman who nurtured him to his dying day and an aging, lily-white seaman who set sail when Bob was a baby. The boy grew up in Trench Town, a shanty-strewn slum of Kingston, the nation’s capital. According to Timothy White’s romantic biography, Catch a Fire, young Marley was a respected streetfighter—his favorite jab was “Me got de handle, focker, yuh gon’ get de blade”—and soccer-playing rude boy who could also belt out a captivating tune.

Knowing that idle hands are ol’ Screwface’s plaything, Bob’s mother put him to work as a welder, but after a stray steel splinter lodged itself into his eye, music became his life. Though his earliest songs were dancy pop tunes, by the late 60s Bob Marley and the Wailers would shed their sharp suits and ties for the Rasta-inspired reggae style that would make them legends.

When he was a boy, the dusty, dreadlocked mendicants who wandered barefoot from the Dungle to the jungle struck fear in Bob Marley’s heart. At that time, the cult of Rastafari was still an obscure offshoot of Marcus Garvey’s militant “back to Africa” movement which gathered only the most austere adherents, but by the 60s much of Jamaican society embraced rebellious Rasta mysticism as the symbolic antithesis of the white ruling class they despised.

The sect’s belief system is an amalgamation of biblical prophecy and Afrocentrism, taking its name from Ras Tafari, who was crowned Ethiopia’s emperor in 1930 and thereafter known as Haile Selassie I. This was heralded by many of Marcus Garvey’s followers as a fulfillment of prophecy, citing Psalm 68:31: “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.” The Ethiopian press called Selassie “King of Kings” and the “Lion of Judah,” which fueled the fire.

Rastafarians came to believe that His Majesty Haile Selassie would gather the lost tribes of Africa to the mother continent and establish God’s Kingdom on earth. Many believed him to be God incarnate. When the Emperor visited Jamaica in April 1966, over 100,000 fervent believers flocked to greet him on the tarmac, hoping that the divine king would finally liberate them from Babylon and bring them home. The Emperor was dumbfounded by this bizarre reception. While Selassie never denied his divinity, he suggested that the people of Jamaica pursue freedom on their own island rather than pour into Ethiopia.

Bob got married that same year, and his wife, Rita, witnessed Haile Selassie’s procession through Kingston. She was sure that the Emperor looked directly into her eyes and waved his hand—which bore a stigmata. It was not long before she became a devout Rasta, bringing the word back home to her husband.

Bob was not an instant convert. He had always been inspired by moralistic proverbs and enjoyed a nice puff of reefer now and again, but it was not until he met Mortimo Planno in 1967, the only Rasta elder to have direct contact with Haile Selassie, that Marley came to follow the Rasta path. During a heavy smoking session, Bob told Planno about a strange dream in which a khaki-dressed man gave him a ring with a black stone. Planno covered all angles, telling Bob the dream was a sign that he would either grow spiritually or “ketch a fire.” Preferring the former possibility, Bob began to grow out his dreads and “reason” with the Rastas.

During a disastrous, if serendipitous international tour in 1972, the Wailers found themselves stranded in London, where they met Chris Blackwell, founder of the rock label Island Records. Blackwell would go on to provide the capital and promotion behind the group’s phenomenal success among rock n’ roll fans, bringing reggae into the mainstream. After the remarkable critical reception of the back-to-back albums Catch a Fire and Burnin’ in 1973, Bob Marley and the Wailers became the Rastafari’s representative to the world.

Rastafari’s reputation for marijuana and sexual license has often overshadowed the rigid discipline of the sect. The commandments of God, or “Jah,” are to be followed rigorously. Drawing on Old Testament law, Rastas abstain from eating pork and shellfish—or any meat for that matter. Even salt is considered unclean. Their dreadlocks are inspired by the biblical decree that men are not to take a razor to their heads.

Of course, the cultivation, sale, and constant smoking of ganja is a central activity for Rastafarians. The Bible is regarded as the word of truth, but Rastas also hold that it has been corrupted by the editorial work of the wicked white man. Therefore their biblical study is to be assisted by inner visions, and there is nothing like a fat joint to inspire a vivid imagination.

The Rasta community generally survives on the squatter fringe of society. Material excesses are shunned, as well as the unnatural technologies of their white oppressors. Both capitalism and communism are generally held in contempt, the former for its exploitation of the People of Jah, the latter for its condemnation of religion. Despite their abiding faith that Jah will soon inaugurate an age of peace, Rastafarians are willing to defend their property, family, and honor by any means necessary.  Even those Jamaicans who find the Rasta beliefs to be nonsensical will generally show dreads the respect that any potentially violent earthly power commands.

In 1975 Haile Selassie was deposed—and most likely assassinated—by Marxist revolutionaries in Ethiopia, yet many Rastas refused to believe that His Majesty had actually died. How could God die? It had to be more lies from the Babylon press. It was just another sign of immanent Armageddon, and they would wait patiently for the return of their king.

The absolute kingship of Haile Selassie notwithstanding, Rastafari generally eschew all earthly hierarchies among men. However, women are not included in important activities—eg. the smoking of the sacred chillum—particularly during their menstrual cycle, when they are completely segregated from the men. Traditionally, Rasta women are there to have sex, bear children, cook meals, perform household chores, and keep their mouths shut unless asked for an opinion. They are to maintain the highest standards of modesty, wearing no makeup but “the beaded gleam on their brows and the dust on their necks, their only fragrance that of perspiration.” You know, a good woman.

Rita Marley was such a woman. While Bob shined in the spotlight, Rita sang backup. While Bob took countless beautiful lovers to bed—including Miss World ’76—Rita waited faithfully for her man to come home (most of the time, anyway.) And when Bob brought his numerous illegitimate children home for a visit, Rita bestowed her blessings, as Rasta women consider themselves to be mothers to all children. She even took a bullet for her husband.

1976 was a turbulent year for Bob Marley. He was riding the recent international success of his “No Woman, No Cry” single, and had acquired a luxurious house in a wealthy neighborhood in uptown Kingston. To the chagrin of his wife and fellow ghetto Rastas, Bob was drawn into the fold of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, an elitist splinter sect of the Rasta movement led by the charismatic Prophet Gad.

Bob’s close friend Skilly Cole became a Twelve Tribes disciple as well. The former professional soccer player was a man of many talents.  Aside from terrorizing and occasionally beating Jamaican DJs to get Bob Marley records on the air (which he admitted in court,) Skilly was also involved with a crime syndicate known as the Concrete Jungle.  One of their scams was to rig horse races by kidnapping and threatening jockeys, but when the deal went sour, Skilly’s gangster associates came after Bob. The thugs extorted Bob for Skilly’s debt, to be paid off two thousand dollars a day.

To top it off, Kingston was in the throes of a political frenzy.  Jamaican elections were often marred by shootouts between the hired thugs of both major political parties—the conservative Jamaica Labor Party and the socialist People’s National Party—but the 1976 elections were particularly riotous. With the global oil crisis crippling the economy, the streets stirred with discontent and the possibility of popular uprising. Prime minister Michael Manley sent an envoy to Bob’s house to ask him to perform at the state-sponsored Smile Jamaica concert before the December election in an attempt to calm the agitated public. Bob agreed, despite the threat of becoming entangled in the political violence.

One week before the concert, the PNP provided 24-hour security at the Marley house. As a result, the Concrete Jungle’s money collector was repeatedly turned away. On December 3, two days before the Smile Jamaica concert, seven thugs descended upon Marley’s house with guns blazing. His manager, Don Taylor, was shot in the legs and spine. Rita was hit in the skull while running out of the house with Bob’s children, and one of the gunmen popped Bob in the chest, barely missing his heart. The shooters escaped before police arrived. Somehow no one was killed, and Marley played an extended set at Smile Jamaica, famously saying, “De people trying to make dis world worse aren’t taking a day off. How can I?”

There are no official confirmations of the assailants’ identities, but according to Timothy White’s biography they were brought to justice. Two were shot in the head. Two had their throats slit in the jungle, Rasta style. The remaining two went insane, wandering the streets muttering about flaming ghosts and snakes in their heads—one hung himself, and the other simply disappeared. Years later, manager Don Taylor—who also claimed that Marley had beat the shit out of him on multiple occasions after he took a bullet for Bob—testified that he had witnessed some of the men being tried and hung in a back alley by a lynch mob.

Bob disappeared for a month while things cooled off, emerging with the release of Exodus the following year, calling for repatriation in the face of persecution on the title track:

Walk, through the roads of creation
We’re the generation
Who trod through great tribulation

Exodus, movement of Jah people…

It was that year, 1977, that Bob met with Haile Selassie’s exiled successor, Crown Prince Asfa Wossen. The men talked for hours, but before they parted, Wossen presented Marley with a token of his esteem. It was the late Emperor Haile Selassie’s ring, bearing a black jewel and an image of the Lion of Judah, which Wossen slipped onto Marley’s index finger—just like in his dream. Marley was dumbfounded. His fate was sealed.

That same year, Bob Marley incurred a soccer injury on his toe, but the wound refused to heal. He was diagnosed with melanoma. Doctors advised amputation, but Marley refused, as such procedures were considered a bodily desecration by Rastafarians. He would put his faith in Jah and carry on.

For the next three years, Bob Marley released three brilliant albums, including his final revolutionary call to Jah’s people, Uprising. In 1978, he embarked on a sweeping Babylonian world tour of the US, Europe, Australia, and Japan. Jamaican expatriates in London, New York, and Miami were enthralled, as well as Aborigines in Australia and, oddly enough, rebellious Japanese youths.

That same year, Marley’s most telling statements came in an interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal, considered a political prisoner by the radical left after being convicted for murdering a white police officer. Their candid conversation is rarely mentioned in Marley’s glowing retrospectives.  Incredulous Babylonians would never understand.

[translation here]

“Once you smoke herb, you all must think alike,” Marley explained to Abu-Jamal, “Now if you thinking alike, dat mean we ‘pon the same track. If we ‘pon the same track, that mean we gonna unite….

“Exodus means coming together…the movement of Afrika, of Black people. Exodus from Babylon, we’re in Babylon, and then a physical exodus to Home. But what we really a say is dat, we waan Black people to unite, with one another, seen?…

“Because, what [Haile Selassie] say is true. Until the philosophy that hold one people higher than the other one is no more, then if it continue, ya gwanna have war! When it done, problem over, seen?…

“Because Christ government shall rule the earth, ya know? And Christ is Rastafari! Over a period of time, people think, and hafta get over thinking that Christ was White. But Christ a Black mon! Just like the Bible tell ya, say Christ Black, Solomon, say him Black, Moses, tell ya, say him Black, Jeremiah, say him Black, Haile Selassie Black. So Christ no white. Christ Black, you know?…

“[The Church in] Rome is the enemy, you know? Rome is the enemy of the people. Dem is the Anti-Christ, and dem walk around and tell people dem a deal with Christ. But naturally, dem is Anti-Christ, for Christ is Haile Selassie…

“Capitalism and communism are finished. It Rasta now! The Blackmon way of life. That’s what we a say now dread. We a say: give the Blackmon fe him way of life now. Mek him show you how government run and how people care for people….

“Cause the white man not living good, you know. The China man naa live good, either. Why? Because the Blackmon is not united. Because the Blackmon, him are the cornerstone pon earth! When time him shaky, the whole earth shaky. You see? When him solid, everything solid. And it a long while since we have been solid….”

∞

In April 1980, Bob Marley appeared at the Zimbabwe Independence Day ceremonies before returning to New York. He knew that his time was short. Though kept a secret from the public, the cancer had metastasized from his toe to his lungs, liver, and brain. That September he played two final shows in Madison Square Garden, but collapsed the next day while jogging with Skilly Cole in Central Park. He was rushed to the hospital after suffering a stroke, where he immediately began receiving radium treatments in the Cancer Center.

Marley clung to life with all of his might. He flew to Germany to receive the contraversial treatments of Dr. Josef Issels, whose “whole body” theory held that nutritional deficiencies and toxic impurities were responsible for cancer, but life was slipping away.  En route to Jamaica, Marley was taken to the Cedars of Lebanon Hosptial in Miami, where he finally succumbed to the creeping illness on May 11, 1981.

The whole of the Third World and the fringes of the First wept at the death of their prophet. There was spiritual confusion.  If Jah’s blessing bestows health and happiness, why had His tortured disciple died in such a fashion, his body eating itself whole, his sacred dreadlocks falling away?

Bob Marley’s body was interred in a tomb near his hometown after a dramatic state funeral. The Twelve Tribes of Israel were left reeling, but their Prophet Gad was sure of one thing. He wanted the Emperor’s black-stone ring bearing the Lion of Judah, and hectored Marley’s mother in her time of mourning. Bob Marley was his disciple, the Prophet Gad insisted, and by rights the precious ring was his. The End Times were upon the land, and Gad was chosen to lead Jah’s people.

“De ring gwan back from whence it came,” Marley’s mother told the so-called Prophet. “It back on His Majesty’s mighty hand. And yuh know neither de day nor de hour.”

Marley’s message of freedom has since spread to the ends of the earth. Cynical Westerners may mock the ridiculous and generally superficial manner in which Bob Marley’s Rastafarian way of life is adopted by white kids lacking their own racial identity, but the sense of collective suffering and redemptive hope that Marley’s music inspires in the poorest corners of the earth is mind-blowing. From Carribean shanty-towns to New York tenements to the most squalid African village, revolutionary reggae presents the glorious possibility that one day all of God’s children will be invited to the table, while also tantalizing the listener’s vindictive desire to see Babylon and all of her whorish children burn like fields of sugarcane.

One Love, mon.

© 2011 Joseph Allen

Bob Marley — “Exodus”
1979

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

Phil Ochs Wrote the Songs,
but Who Tied the Noose?

April 9, 2011 By Joe Allen

The Vietnam War stirred a stunning spirit of rebellion in America’s youth, and folk singer Phil Ochs was at the front of the picket line to rouse the rabble with a tune. Like Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs used his acoustic guitar to skewer the warmongering authorities and wowed the ladies with his earnest eyes. But unlike Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs did not go on to capriciously convert to a succession of Abrahamic religions, wear clownish white suits, paint his old face with girly make-up, or launch multiple comeback tours.

Unlike Dylan, Phil never achieved enough success to feel contempt for the stagehands who toil all day to erect his stage and lug his gear around. Phil never ordered his heavy-handed security guards to corral these grimy-pawed laborers into some dark corner backstage so that the legendary populist Bob Dylan wouldn’t have to make eye contact with the help… asshole.

Nope, Phil Ochs was found hanging in his sister’s New York apartment on April 9, 1976 at the age of 34.

Despite the bizarre antics of the schizophrenic alter-ego which consumed him in his latter days, Phil Ochs is remembered by the radical left as a man with a message. Whether it was civil rights in Mississippi, miner strikes in Kentucky, draft-paper bonfires in Washington DC, or revolution in Cuba, Phil Ochs had something to sing about the cause. His debut album in 1964, All the News That’s Fit to Sing, earned him the title of “the singing journalist.”

While kids were getting groovy in the Age of Aquarius, their television sets were dripping with the blood of young American men and Vietnamese villagers. Kids were coming home maimed or in coffins by the tens of thousands. That’s one bad fucking trip, man.

The obvious hypocrisy of spreading democracy by way of heavy artillery became more than many could bear.  American streets filled with angry youth whose radical ideas were often inspired by the revolutionary zeal that was transforming volatile nations such as Cuba or China.

What do we want?
Peace!
When do we want it?
Not next week, you asshole!

Go to any anti-war rally, and there’s Phil with his guitar. The 1965 release of I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore solidified his identity as a voice of conscience in the folk scene. His goofy protest ditty “Draft Dodger Rag” became the feel-good hit of the Peace Movement.

The album’s title track hits a more serious note. Ochs sings from the perspective of all the young men throughout history who have marched to their deaths in war. He bore witness to the bloody Battle of New Orleans and the fratricide of the Civil War. He crawled in the trenches of Germany and heard Hiroshima’s “mushroom roar.” But Phil Ochs ain’t marching anymore, and he would appreciate it if everyone else would stop, too.

But the marching didn’t stop, and the war in Vietnam began to wear on Phil’s nerves. He threw himself into new songs. His sound began to change, utilizing more polished production techniques, and he eventually incorporated a full band. Many hardcore folk fans were furious at this new, electric Phil, but few could deny the power of his morbidly fascinated anthem, “Crucifixion.” Robert Kennedy wept when he heard Ochs perform the song on a DC train. Written as a tribute to John F. Kennedy, the lyrics could memorialize any martyr enshrined by masses:

But you know I predicted it, I knew he had to fall
How did it happen? I hope his suffering was small
Tell me every detail, for I’ve got to know it all
And do you have a picture of the pain?

[…]

So good to be alive when the eulogy is read
The climax of emotion, the worship of the dead
And the cycle of sacrifice unwinds…

Phil watched in horror as the US government went insane. The US government was also watching Phil, and the feeling was mutual. It is an established fact that the FBI and CIA were keeping tabs on troublesome youngsters clamoring for peace, and stepped in to manipulate the movement whenever possible. Some suspicious observers even accuse these powerful agencies of resorting to covert murder to stifle dissent. Poisoned tablets. Drug-induced mind control. Grassy knolls. Manchurian Candidates.

Phil’s tirades against The Man earned him a dossier in the extensive FBI files kept on dangerous “subversives” and “Communists.” After the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy in 1968, Ochs began to wonder how long it might be before “Crucifixion” was about him.

Even in the face of what he thought to be certain death, Phil refused to be quiet. In 1969 he released his last studio recording, Rehearsals for Retirement. The cover features a somber tombstone that reads:

Phil Ochs
(American)
Born: El Paso, Texas 1940
Died: Chicago, Illinois 1968

The death date is a reference to the police brutality Ochs witnessed at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that year and the subsequent election of the ultra-conservative Richard Nixon. It must have killed his soul.

Ochs intended this last album to be Elvis Presley sings Che Guevara, but it sounds more like a jammin’ Jimmy Buffet grasping for the Revolution—and wrapping his fingers around another icy margarita instead.

Disillusioned with the radio’s refusal to play his music and America’s increasing apathy toward social idealism, Ochs set off to travel abroad in 1971. After a short spell in China, he moved on to Chile, joining folk-singer Victor Jara in support of the revolutionary Marxists that were taking hold in Latin America. Phil’s activist adventures found him running afoul of the Argentinian and Bolivian governments, from which he narrowly escaped long-term imprisonment. Shaken, he retreated back to the US before embarking to Australia, and then Africa in 1973. If there was any place for Phil to make a real difference, it had to be Africa.

One night Phil went for a walk on the beach in Tanzania. A band of thugs leapt out of the shadows and fell upon him. One held Ochs in a brutal stranglehold while the others stripped him of his possessions. His vocal chords were crushed.

Ochs refused to believe that the attack was the responsibility of savage marauders. It had to be a CIA plot. “They” had taken his voice away.

Broken and destitute, Phil returned to New York, where he flew over the cuckoo’s nest with all the grace of a crippled pigeon. The Vietnam War was finally “finished” in April of 1975. Suddenly the lifetime revolutionary was left without a purpose. Friends got worried. It wasn’t just his slurred rants about various government agencies out to get him or the countless hours spent alone in quiet misery. No, it was his insistence that he was no longer Phil Ochs that really raised eyebrows.

Phil Ochs was dead, he told people. John Train killed him. A song fragment scribbled at the time reads:

Phil Ochs checked into the Chelsea Hotel
There was blood on his clothes…
Train, Train, Train, the outlaw and his brain…

His psychotic transformation was sudden and absolute.  Phil who?

John Train is a right-wing hard-ass and a whiskeybent street-brawler. John Train sings country songs and punches you in the eye. John Train don’t take no shit from nobody, especially not Bob Dylan. In one delusional tirade, a wasted John Train told his audience:

“I put out a contract on [CIA Director, William] Colby for a hundred thousand dollars. I told Colby he’s got a half year to get out or he’s dead. They can kill me but he’s dead.”

William Colby was replaced by George H. W. Bush in January of 1976, and a few months later, John Train slipped a rope around Phil Ochs’ neck and strung him up in his sister’s apartment. It would be fifteen years before the next major war. When the bombs began falling on Baghdad in 1991, Phil Ochs’ passionate voice of protest was absent—but then, so was everyone else’s.

© 2011 Joseph Allen

Phil Ochs — “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”
c. 1966

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April 8, 2011 By Joe Allen 8 Comments

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Wendy O Williams
aka “The Squirrel Lady”

April 6, 2011 By Joe Allen

© Brandt Hardin at DREGstudios.com

Wendy O Williams’ stage presence was so sexy, it caused temporary impotence.  A classic evening with the Plasmatics in the 80s included Wendy dangling TNT over the audience’s head before blowing cars up onstage.  TVs were smashed to bits, guitars chainsawed in two, microphones were deepthroated, Wendy O mounted speakers for some orgasm-inducing feedback, and the occasional cover was thrown in for ironic effect—such as Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man.”  Dubbed “pornography rock,” the act saw the destruction of nearly everything onstage, and in the end, their lead singer.  Wendy O shot herself in the head on April 6, 1998.

April of 1998 happened to be a curiously deadly month in the music world.  Rozz Williams hung himself on the 1st, Rob Pilatus floated his pill-raft down Booze River on the 2nd, virtuoso Cozy Powell crashed his Saab while talking on a clunky 1990s cell phone on the 5th, and Wendy O Williams shot herself on the 6th—the same night that Tammy Wynette passed away from a blood clot in her lung.  To top it off, Paul McCartney’s wife, Linda, succumbed to metastasizing breast cancer on the 17th.

As it happened, a series of ferocious tornadoes ravaged the South during that month, killing 32 people in Birmingham on April 2.  On the 16th, ten freak twisters ripped Middle Tennessee apart, one of them tearing through downtown Music City. 12 people were killed that day.  I suppose Wendy O had plenty of company in the celestial waiting room.  According to her suicide note, she’d made her appointment early.

I have to admire Wendy O Williams for her ovaries of steel.  For the “Queen of Shock Rock,” femininity meant sticking e-tape on your tits, pumping some iron, and then slapping the nearest bystander with your swollen clit.  When Wendy wanted her woo woo wazzled, she sought out the biggest, baddest, hardest, nastiest men she could wrap her sweaty legs around.  It wasn’t an invitation to sweet-lovin’ with this chick—it was a ball-busting challenge.  On ”I Love Sex (and Rock n’ Roll)” she sang:

Don’t waste my urges, no I’m bored to death
Well you can save your breath
You’re fading fast

Driven by hunger, just ain’t gettin’ my fill
Don’t know the reason why
That’s who I am

What kind of man could handle such a scrotum-shredding bitch?  “Captain Kink” Rod Swenson, that’s who.  After meeting at his New York club, he immediately asked her to be his wife.  While they never tied the knot—other than some pleasant B&D action—they remained partners for the better part of Wendy’s life, which lasted much longer than one might have expected.

It’s one thing for a woman wearing a Mohawk to slap a groping cop in the face—which she did.  It’s another thing entirely to climb out of a convertible rocketing through the desert onto a rope-ladder dangling from a small airplane and fly off over a cliff—which she also did, supposedly with no safety equipment.  That makes me want to dig up her corpse and plant a big, slobbery smooch on her rotten jaw.

To say that Wendy O had a morbid sense of humor would be an understatement.  Her song “Brain Dead” sounds like it was written by Dr. Seuss while huffing paint in a fallout shelter and waiting for the New World Order to come confiscate his crayons:

Dragged off in the dead of night
Disappear without a sight

For global peace is what we pray
As long as things are done our way

Disagree or acting rude
We will chop you up for food

The song comes from a concept album recorded in 1987 called Maggots: The Record, which chronicles a catastrophic attempt at geo-engineering.  Scientists developed a breed of maggots which would eat all the trash on earth, and then die.  But they just kept eating everything, turning humans into zombies before wiping them out completely.  When asked about the violence of her artistic expression, Wendy responded, “Talk about violence—I don’t do anything violent.

“Talk about violence, what’s going on in Nicaragua? What’s going on in El Salvador?” she railed. ”That’s violent. What are they doing to the planet with chemicals and acid rain? That’s violent. What are people doing to each other? Raping. That’s violent.

“I’m striking out at an icon that has no life. There’s a big difference between what has life and what doesn’t. I mean, I’ve been a vegetarian for 16 years.”

The Plasmatics couldn’t peddle their schtick forever, and when their heyday was over, Wendy O retired with Swenson to a cabin nestled in the woods of Connecticut.  She spent the rest of her life in seclusion, being a friend to animals and contemplating the Void, which earned her the nickname “The Squirrel Lady.”  In fact, it appears that feeding acorns to squirrels was the last thing she did before feeding herself to the worms on April 6, 1998.  Her body was found in the woods by Swenson when he returned home from shopping.  The pistol was laying in a bed of dead leaves.  Her suicide note read:

The act of taking my own life is not something I am doing without a lot of thought. I don’t believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights that anyone in a free society should have.

For me much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm.

Love always,
Wendy

Swenson said of the love of his life:

“She had been talking about taking her own life for almost four years. She was at home in the peak of her career, but found the more ordinary ‘hypocrisies of life’ as she called them excruciatingly hard to deal with. In one sense she was the strongest person I have ever known, and in another, a side which most people never saw, the most vulnerable. She felt, in effect, she’d peaked and didn’t care to live in a world in which she was uncomfortable, and below peak any longer.

“Speaking personally for myself, I loved her beyond imagination. She was a source of strength, inspiration, and courage. The pain at this moment in losing her is inexpressible.”

That people will sit down one day, get their affairs in order, and blow their brains out is absolutely baffling to me.  I’ve know a number of men to do so.  In fact, there were recently two public suicides down the road from my hometown.

In the first instance, a young man in his early 20s walked into Wal-Mart where his ex-girlfriend was eating with her new beau.  He told her that he was going to kill himself, walked back into the space between the automatic doors, and then shot himself in the face in front of everybody.

A few days later, a 77 year-old man parked his car in front of the local hospital, carefully pinned a note to his shirt,* tasted the barrel, and then pulled the trigger.

For loved ones, self-inflicted pistol wounds are the ultimate act of selfish abandonment.  For gossiphoppers, it is a fresh bit of fat to chew, and for custodians—a nasty mess to clean.

For Wendy O Williams, suicide was a final act of destructive performance art.  April of ’98 was a hot month for dead rock stars, and she wasn’t about to be upstaged by some nancy boy like Rozz Williams.

© 2011 Joseph Allen

A trailer for
Wendy O Williams and the Plasmatics:
10 Years of Revolutionary Rock n’ Roll
featuring a montage of classic Wendy O footage

*[corrected from: "laid his note on his lap"]

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

How Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley
Attained Intravenous Enlightenment

April 5, 2011 By Joe Allen

It is an interesting coincidence that the respective coroners’ reports for Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley place both of their deaths on April 5, and that they were born within six months of each other just before the Summer of Love.  Yet these two Seattle icons made dramatically different exits.  Kurt went out with a bang in 1994, while Layne slowly faded away, finally disappearing completely in 2002.

They were suffering saints in my formative, pube-sprouting years, and I enshrined their brooding images in my superstar iconography. Inspired by rock n’ roll fantasies, I steeled my will against the Christ to whom eunuchs bow, tasted 31 flavors of fucked up, and my grandmother even gave me an old maroon cardigan to match my long blond hair. Monkey see, monkey do.  The result was the long-awaited loss of my virginity to an avid Hole fan and constant harassment from rednecks at school. Thanks, Grandma.

Then my heroes killed themselves. I never had to really miss Kurt or Layne, though, because the cd-player kept their souls spinning and drowned out the noise of the outside world. Those songs still bring back memories from my childhood.

^

Kurt

© Brandt Hardin at DREGstudios.com

Kurt Cobain was a lonesome, sensitive child. His parents always bickered with each other when he needed attention, leaving him to his only friends—an imaginary specter named “Boddah” and his gay pal from school, Myer Loftin. Naturally, he was bullied by local yokels for maintaining the latter relationship, setting him squarely against the surly sons of loggers and their masculine redneck values.

Kurt faced a cruel, predatory cosmos throughout those early years in Aberdeen, WA. It was a world populated with judgemental adults and their ruthless, piranha-like spawn, where harsh criticism and bathroom bitch-slappings lurked around every corner—a world which Cobain would never make peace with.

“I wouldn’t have been surprised if they voted me Most Likely to Kill Everyone at a High School Dance[,]” he mused years later.  “[B]ut I’m sure I would opt to kill myself first.”

Nothing seemed to satisfy the young man, so he left the comfort of home to seek enlightenment in the gutter. He bummed change like a wandering mendicant, did cheap drugs, surfed couches, and occasionally slept underneath the bridge. This bitter taste set him apart from the flavorless middle-class and their wealthy overlords.

Legend has it that Kurt bought his first amplifier with his father’s guns. His mother had tossed them into the river after a vicious domestic dispute, and Kurt fished them out to take them to the pawn shop. After a brief spell with a punk band called Skid Row, Cobain formed Nirvana with bassist Chris Novoselic, playing a particularly angsty variation of quirky garage rock which resonated with the wayward youth of Seattle.

In 1989 Nirvana was signed to the Sub Pop label, where they enjoyed moderate underground success. Kurt wrote in his journal, “Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. Nirvana means freedom from pain and suffering in the external world and thats [sic] close to my definition of punk rock.”

Cobain’s choice of band names is compelling.  The original Sanskrit term simply means “to extinguish the flame,” as in the flames of desire. The Buddha used the word “nirvana” to describe the state of Enlightenment which frees the soul from this miserable karmic cycle of endless reincarnation.

The Buddha taught four Noble Truths, which come off to many Westerners as being extremely emo:

  • Everything is suffering.
  • Suffering is caused by desire, which chains every being to fleeting pleasures—and the subsequent sorrow of loss.
    Food? Fighting? Fucking? Friendship? Family? Freedom? Feelings? Fuggedaboutit!
  • The only way to end suffering is to end desire—to extinguish the flame.
  • To end desire, one must obtain Enlightenment through the Eightfold Path:

Right Understanding
Right Intention
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration

According to the Buddha, there are no Absolutes to cling to—no heaven, no soul, no God. The Universe is plagued by eternal Entropy, and the only hope is to escape.  For Cobain, there was only one way out.

In 1991 Nirvana released Nevermind, and the teenage universe was suddenly cloaked in lumberjack flannel. The album—featuring an infant swimming toward a fishing hook baited with a pistol—eventually sold over 25 million copies worldwide, knocking Michael Jackson’s Dangerous into the Abyss of Not-Number 1. When not completely obtuse, the lyrics were sorrowful, paranoid, and incurably cynical.

Immediately, MTV cameras revolved around Kurt’s face like black-eyed cherubs. Rolling Stone indulged every painful memory and complaint. Teenagers across the globe were inspired to lament their own pathetic lives before they even graduated highschool. They were goaded to buck the fascist trends of corporate America by buying alternative commodities, and a few were even moved to blow their own heads off after Cobain’s suicide.

Kurt wasn’t trying to be a trend-setter, though. He surveyed the sea of Cobain-clones before him, and it made him sick to his stomach. Literally. The waifish, chain-smoking singer suffered from chronic gastroenteritis, which he medicated with heroin until his dying day. Burning guts. Nausea. Loss of appetite. Vomiting. Constipation. Mud-butt. All was suffering for poor Kurt, and the grunge crowd doted over his every tummy ache.

Kurt despised their sympathy, and claimed to hate the fame. He didn’t want “to be a fucking spokesman” for MTV’s alternative marketing scheme. Like the black-clad anarchists gathering in the Pacific Northwest in the 90s, he wanted to break the constraints of “evil corporate Oppressors” with Universal Enlightenment. In his wildest fantasies, Kurt was ready to start a Revolution, even if that meant breaking a few eggs.

One of the drawings in Cobain’s posthumously published journals shows a camoflage-clad soldier wearing a football helmet dangling from a noose. In one passage, he states (with grammatical errors left unedited):

“I am in absolute and total support of: homosexuality, drug use, in experimentation (although I am living proof of harmful results from over indulgence) Anti oppression, ie (religion, racism, sexism, censorship and patriotism) creativity thru music, art, journalism, Love, friendship, family, animals and full scale violently organized, terrorist-fueled revolution.

“You cannot de-program the Glutton.

“It would be nice to see the gluttons become so commonly hunted down that eventually they will either submit to the oppposite of their ways or be scared shitless to ever leave their homes[...]

“Arm yourself, find a representative of Gluttony or oppression and blow the motherfuckers head off.”

In a letter to Tobi Vail (drummer for Bikini Kill) composed just after the recording of Nevermind, Kurt wrote (without corrections):

“Yeah, all Isms feed off one another, but at the top of the food chain is still the white, corporate, macho, strong ox male. Not redeemable as far as im concerned[...]

“But there are thousands of green minds, young gullable 15 year old Boys out there just starting to fall into the grain of what theyve been told of what man is supposed to be, and there are plenty of tools to use. The most effective tool is entertainment[...]

“We can pose as the enemy to infiltrate the mechanics of the system to start its rot from the inside[...] And the hairy, sweaty, macho, sexist dickheads will soon drown in a pool of razorblades and semen, stemmed from the uprising of their children[...]

“Homophobe vaccectomy[...]

“The revolution will be televised[...]

“As you may have guessed by now Ive been taking a lot of drugs lately It might be time for the Betty Ford Clinic or the Richard Nixon library to save me from abusing my enemic, rodent-like body any longer.”

Drug addiction would take precedence over any of Cobain’s revolutionary aims.  As with the Buddha, the world hit Kurt like a hot kiss on a raw nerve, and he was eager to subsume all earthly desires under one.

In February 1992 Kurt married Courtney Love, the brash, bitchy frontwoman for the feminist fatale rock band, Hole—which was a much more appropriate title than her own surname. Love was also a junky, happy to slave over a hot spoon for her husband. It is telling that Kurt seemed to intentionally misspell the drug’s name in his journals, calling it “heroine.”

During one of the Buddha’s sermons, an earnest seeker asked the Awakened One, “What is Enlightenment?” The Buddha simply smiled and held up a flower. It must have been a red poppy.

The junky’s pursuit of Nirvana is like an opioid variation on the Eightfold Path.

  • Right Understanding: Opiates can kill the pain of desire, if only for a moment.
  • Right Intention: Seek a fix to annihilate one’s Self.

Not long after Kurt and Courtney’s daughter, Francis Bean, was born, an interviewer for Vanity Fair reported that Courtney had shot heroin while pregnant. The public reacted with disgust, and Francis Bean was soon taken into state custody for a short time. Unable to stem the tide of media criticism, Kurt and Courtney resorted to leaving violent threats on journalists’ answering machines. Despite the couple’s erratic behavior, they were awarded custody of their daughter in early 1993.

While he was disgusted with the world, Kurt was fascinated by childbirth. His last album, released in 1993, was called In Utero (though he originally intended to call it I Hate Myself and Want to Die.) He was obsessed with the ability of male seahorses to bear children, and famously said: “Holding my baby is the best drug in the world. I don’t want my daughter to grow up with people telling her that her parents were junkies.”

The situation quickly deteriorated from there.  Police were called to the Cobains’ Seattle home a number of times in 1993. On one visit they confiscated an arsenal of Kurt’s guns, which he claimed were for personal protection. On another occasion he was arrested for assaulting Courtney—who had quite a reputation for beating the shit out of her lovers as well. The Cobains’ nanny and various others close to the couple have claimed that Kurt was making plans to cut Courtney out of his will and file for divorce.

Nirvana embarked on a tour later that year, which ended abruptly in March 1994, after Kurt overdosed on Roofies and childrens’ sleeping pills in Italy. He was promptly flown back to America and checked into an LA rehab facility—from which he escaped over the fence. For days, Kurt Cobain was missing. Courtney Love even hired a private investigator, Tom Grant, to look for her husband.

Kurt was finally found by a maintenance man on April 8, 1994, behind the locked door of “the greenhouse” above the garage of the singer’s home in Seattle. A 20-gauge Remington shotgun was cradled in his arms, and a hole was blown through his head. There were syringes, baggies, and enough heroin to kill a small horse in his veins. No fingerprints were found on the gun or the bullets. A farewell letter addressed to his imaginary friend “Boddah” was placed beside his body.

Like Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Pete Ham, and Seattle riot grrrl Mia Zapata, Kurt Cobain was 27 when he died.

Conspiracy theories abound.  Some see an assassination by greedy record industry executives, who sold Nirvana albums at a rate of 50,000 a day in the wake of Cobain’s death. Tom Grant, P.I. believes that his former employer, Courtney Love, had her husband killed to secure her inheritance. Curiously, Hole’s new album was released two weeks later, entitled Live Through This.

On April 10 a crowd estimated at up to 10,000 gathered in Seattle’s Space Needle Park to pay homage to their newly christened rock star martyr. A recording of Courtney Love was played over a sound system, in which she alternately read portions of Kurt’s alleged suicide note, wept, and incited the crowd to deride her late husband for being so selfish. The devout followers burnt their flannel shirts, called their fallen angel an “asshole” in unison, and at least sixty-eight copycat suicides were recorded worldwide.

The last lines of Kurt’s letter to “Boddah” are particularly insightful:

I’m too much of an erratic, moody baby! I don’t have the passion anymore and so remember, it’s better to burn out than to fade away.

peace, love, Empathy,
Kurt Cobain

^

Layne

© Brandt Hardin

Like Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley came to be portrayed as a Seattle-spawned Opiate Icon.  But unlike Cobain—about whom many millions of words have been composed—Staley’s life languished in obscurity. Many argue that Layne’s exacting musicianship far outpaced Cobain’s sloppy style, and that he did not receive the commemoration he deserved. Perhaps if Layne had gone out in an equally dramatic fashion, he would have become a celebrated dead rock star like Kurt. But whereas Cobain talked about hating the media while occupying the spotlight, Staley actually preferred to remain in the shadows, where he slowly slipped out of existence.

Like many of the kids who came to worship him, Layne had a sorry start in life, growing up in Kirkland, WA.  As with Cobain, his father left when he was only seven, an abandonment that would haunt the boy into adulthood. When Layne finally did reconnect with his estranged father—after the old man saw his son in a magazine—Layne encountered a withered junky who used his now-famous son to stay high.

Layne was attracted to the sex and drugs in rock n’ roll from the start. “I wanted to do blow, and I wanted to have those babes under my arms,” he said candidly during his last interview with Rolling Stone in 1996. “I didn’t know what blow was, and I didn’t know what sex was, but it looked impressive to me because it was written in [a rock music] magazine.”

He wasted no time pursuing his dream. After high school, Layne began playing in various glam bands before meeting guitarist Jerry Cantrell in 1987. They worked on a few different projects together, eventually moving away from the 80s metal sound with Alice in Chains’ first album, appropriately entitled We Die Young, in 1990. This was followed by the release of Facelift later that year—which would go double platinum.

Their second LP, Dirt, is generally considered to be Staley’s brooding masterpiece, even though most of the lyrics were written by Jerry Cantrell.  The album sold over six million copies, and remains one of the most influential albums of the 90s—after which every frontman began singing out of his tonsils.  It was soon followed by the sorrowful Jar of Flies, which was actually the first EP to go platinum in the US.  Staley contributed most of the lyrics on that album.  The meloncholy songs lull the listener into a contemplative stillness, and paint a desperate picture of a man whose innocence and joy has all but dried up.

It was Layne’s work with Mad Season in 1995, however, that yields the most insight into his state of mind.  Even the cover art was his own illustration.  You might call the mellow music ”crackhead blues”: songs about addiction, depression, and the disappointment that accompanies false religion.  It was a surprising success, selling more than a million copies.

Unfortunately, success was not as kind to Staley’s soul as it was his bank account.  It didn’t take long for the excess to wear him down. ”If I ever got a gold record, I was going to do my first line of coke on that. I had a great time riding around in limos and eating lobster and gettin’ laid[...] But I can’t physically or mentally live in that lifestyle constantly.”

Layne even claimed to have had a couple of near-death experiences which he thought might turn his life around.  “I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of where I was going to go if I did not follow through with [sobriety.]  That makes me sad for my friends who have taken their own lives, because I know that if your time is not finished here, and you end it yourself, then you gotta finish it somewhere else.”

This was to be Staley’s last magazine interview before dwindling into obscurity. He would lose his long-time girlfriend, Demri Parrott, to a drug-related bacterial infection later that year. After this, he simply withered away.

By 2002 he was living in Seattle’s notoriously drug-saturated U District. He became a complete shut-in, flushed with cash, and his only visitors were basically his drug dealers. His body was shattered, and his teeth had rotted down to black gums.  With one foot in the grave, he denied his body according to the Eightfold Path of the Junky.

  • Right Speech: Gets you the right amount for the right price.
  • Right Action: Keeps your dealers from thinking you are a narc.
  • Right Livelihood: Brings in enough income to get you to the next fix.

“My liver is not functioning and I’m throwing up and shitting my pants,” he told biographer Adriana Rubio, about three months before succumbing.  “I know I’m near death.  I did crack and heroin for years.  I know I have no chance.  It’s too late.”

On April 20 the police kicked in his door after neighbors complained of a horrible smell. They found Staley surrounded in drug paraphernalia, having been dead for at least two weeks. He was 34. Like so many before and after, he had turned his back on the world in pursuit of liberation. His family and friends were devastated. Incidentally, Layne’s last visitor, former Alice in Chains bassist Mike Starr, died about a month ago from a methadone overdose on March 8.

“I believe there’s a wonderful place to go after this life,” Layne had said back in ’96, ”and I don’t believe there’s eternal damnation for anyone.  I’m not into religion, but I have a good grasp of my spirituality.”

  • Right Effort: Measure out the perfect amount for a good hit.
  • Right Mindfulness: Cook the goods slowly so you lose the cut but not the rush.
  • Right Concentration: Tie off, plunge the needle, and lay back in eager anticipation as the flames of desire flicker out.

© 2011 Joseph Allen

Nirvana — “Lake of Fire”
1993

Mad Season — “River of Deceit”
1995

*[4-6-11 Ed. note: Some minor editing has occured since the original post.]

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