http://www.slate.com/id/2156798/?nav=fix
The magazine's 13th annual "Lives They Lived" issue collects essays about figures who died this year. A Chuck Klosterman piece on Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett and Brian Wilson's madcap psychologist probes the confluence of artistic genius and insanity. Klosterman concludes that "it was not detachment from reality that made them geniuses; detachment made them unproductive and vulnerable." … Dr. Joseph Schildkraut also investigated the overlap of depression and art, but from a psychiatric angle. His early research suggested that pharmaceuticals could fix the chemical imbalances that produce mood swings, according to a piece. But Schildkraut recognized that treating these imbalances might stifle creativity. … Frank Rich remembers playwright Wendy Wasserstein as overtly gregarious but also "an intensely private person who left many mysteries behind." Wasserstein's friends regret that she kept her illness a secret until the end: "I don't think I was the only friend who felt I had somehow failed to see Wendy whole."—C.B.
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Saluts,
Daniel.
New York Times Magazine, Dec. 31
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By CHUCK KLOSTERMAN
Published: December 31, 2006
No one really disputes the correlation between rock music and insanity. At this point, people assume that most unconventional rock performers are either authentically crazy (Ozzy Osbourne, Daniel Johnston), preoccupied with seeming crazy (Prince, Iggy Pop) or trapped somewhere in between (Axl Rose, Courtney Love). Most of the time, there is no cultural penalty for mentally unstable behavior. Very often, a disconnect from reality is perceived as creativity; musical geniuses are expected to be mildly insane. The problem is that when this cliché reaches its inevitable conclusion — when a musician’s charming psychosis devolves into profound mental illness — the symbiotic relationship between vision and lunacy collapses like a black hole.
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Michael Ochs Archives
Syd Barrett is remembered for lots of things: he named Pink Floyd (originally casting the band as the Pink Floyd Sound), he wrote most of the band’s debut album and he inspired the song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” seven years after being jettisoned from the group. He was a painter and a psychedelic pioneer, and his disaffected, hyper-British vocal delivery has influenced singers who’ve never even heard his records. But the main thing Barrett is remembered for is losing his mind during the late 1960s; when he finally succumbed to pancreatic cancer last July, it felt as if he had already been dead for 35 years. For more than three decades, the progenitor of a band that eventually sold more than 200 million albums lived in Cambridge, England, with his mother, content to ignore modernity and focus on gardening.
“He functions on a totally different plane of logic,” David Gilmour once told the British journalist Nick Kent. Gilmour replaced Barrett in Pink Floyd but still tried to produce some of Syd’s ill-fated solo work in 1970; they had been friends as teenagers. “Some people will claim, ‘Well, yeah, man, he’s on a higher cosmic level,’ but basically there’s something drastically wrong,” Gilmour said. “It wasn’t just the drugs.” In a subsequent interview with The National Post, Gilmour wondered if the strobe lights used in Floyd’s stage show might have prompted some kind of photo-epilepsy. For whatever reason, Barrett mentally disappeared; the person who envisioned “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” the first Pink Floyd album, had been replaced by a disinterested clone, a man who preferred to stare into nothingness while repeating the same guitar note ad nauseam, regardless of what song the rest of the band happened to be playing. Syd Barrett broke, and he never got fixed.
Brian Wilson broke, too (several times). Unlike Barrett, he did get fixed; unfortunately, that process made things worse. Wilson spent half of the 1960s writing flawless pop symphonies and inventing, with the other Beach Boys, the modern notion of California; he spent the other half dropping acid, playing piano in a sandbox and losing his mind. (The fact that his father had physically and psychologically abused him for years probably didn’t help.) His meaningful involvement with the Beach Boys was over by 1969, partly because he refused to climb out of bed. In 1975, his desperate wife enlisted the help of a therapist named Eugene Landy.
This decision probably saved Wilson’s life. And that would be a wholly admirable achievement on Landy’s part, were it not for the fact that he proceeded to take total control of the life he resurrected.
Landy’s method of treatment (a system he called “milieu therapy”) was extremely aggressive and adversarial; he threw water on the musician to get him out of bed. At first, this tough love got results: in 1976, the Beach Boys recorded the album “15 Big Ones,” and for the first time since 1964, Wilson traveled with the group on tour. But by 1982, things had collapsed again, and Wilson had somehow managed to become a 340-pound cocaine addict. Landy was called back. This time, his approach was even more radical: he isolated Wilson in Hawaii, prescribed him high doses of psychotropic drugs and proceeded to reconstitute his understanding of existence.
Landy conducted clandestine 24-hour therapy sessions; for years, he and Wilson lived together. Every conversation — every action — was an extension of the program. When Wilson appeared in public, Landy held up cardboard signs that told him how to feel (they said things like “POSITIVE” and “SMILE”). If Landy wasn’t around, Wilson was shadowed by two musclebound assistants. (When Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac tried to work with Wilson in the late ’80s, he called these henchmen “surf Nazis.”) Over time, Wilson took to referring to Landy as “my master” and turned over to him the reins of his semiresurrected career. Landy (who managed the jazz guitarist George Benson during the 1960s) began writing Wilson’s lyrics and taking 50 percent of his earnings, plus a monthly $35,000 fee. He became the beneficiary of the musician’s will. He produced Wilson’s 1988 solo record and engineered Wilson’s ghost-written autobiography, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice — My Own Story,” much of which lionized the brilliance of Dr. Eugene Landy. (Later, Wilson would admit that he didn’t even read the book he supposedly helped write.)
“People don’t know how to really justify the fact that he’s returned so completely, so they have to give it some sort of media concept that says Svengali-type brainwashing,” Landy would later say to critics of his methods. “But if I washed his brain, I’ve certainly washed out all the drugs, all the obese characteristics he had, his eating problems, his smoking problems, all the trouble that he had in his much-publicized prior life. We’ve washed it clean to be a healthy whole human being. If that’s brainwashing, then — yes, that’s what we did.”
Landy was accused by Wilson’s family of “grossly negligent conduct” for his treatment of the singer, and in 1989 he voluntarily surrendered his license to practice psychology in California. Wilson remained reverentially enamored with Landy throughout the ’90s, but he eventually renounced his “master” and now describes his years with the therapist in the language of a prisoner. Landy disappeared to New Mexico and Hawaii, where he practiced psychology until his death.
As with Barrett, it is difficult to separate Wilson’s madness from his brilliance; the two qualities seem completely intertwined, and that can make the music both men created feel unworldly and romantic. But in the end, which quality took over: madness or genius? Which quality dictated their careers? Barrett became a man who couldn’t do anything. Wilson became a man who’d do anything Eugene Landy told him to do. Ultimately, it was not a detachment from reality that made them geniuses; detachment made them unproductive and vulnerable. Contrary to popular mythology, you don’t make good records when you’re crazy. You make them when you’re not.
By CHUCK KLOSTERMAN
Published: December 31, 2006
No one really disputes the correlation between rock music and insanity. At this point, people assume that most unconventional rock performers are either authentically crazy (Ozzy Osbourne, Daniel Johnston), preoccupied with seeming crazy (Prince, Iggy Pop) or trapped somewhere in between (Axl Rose, Courtney Love). Most of the time, there is no cultural penalty for mentally unstable behavior. Very often, a disconnect from reality is perceived as creativity; musical geniuses are expected to be mildly insane. The problem is that when this cliché reaches its inevitable conclusion — when a musician’s charming psychosis devolves into profound mental illness — the symbiotic relationship between vision and lunacy collapses like a black hole.
Skip to next paragraph
Michael Ochs Archives
Syd Barrett is remembered for lots of things: he named Pink Floyd (originally casting the band as the Pink Floyd Sound), he wrote most of the band’s debut album and he inspired the song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” seven years after being jettisoned from the group. He was a painter and a psychedelic pioneer, and his disaffected, hyper-British vocal delivery has influenced singers who’ve never even heard his records. But the main thing Barrett is remembered for is losing his mind during the late 1960s; when he finally succumbed to pancreatic cancer last July, it felt as if he had already been dead for 35 years. For more than three decades, the progenitor of a band that eventually sold more than 200 million albums lived in Cambridge, England, with his mother, content to ignore modernity and focus on gardening.
“He functions on a totally different plane of logic,” David Gilmour once told the British journalist Nick Kent. Gilmour replaced Barrett in Pink Floyd but still tried to produce some of Syd’s ill-fated solo work in 1970; they had been friends as teenagers. “Some people will claim, ‘Well, yeah, man, he’s on a higher cosmic level,’ but basically there’s something drastically wrong,” Gilmour said. “It wasn’t just the drugs.” In a subsequent interview with The National Post, Gilmour wondered if the strobe lights used in Floyd’s stage show might have prompted some kind of photo-epilepsy. For whatever reason, Barrett mentally disappeared; the person who envisioned “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” the first Pink Floyd album, had been replaced by a disinterested clone, a man who preferred to stare into nothingness while repeating the same guitar note ad nauseam, regardless of what song the rest of the band happened to be playing. Syd Barrett broke, and he never got fixed.
Brian Wilson broke, too (several times). Unlike Barrett, he did get fixed; unfortunately, that process made things worse. Wilson spent half of the 1960s writing flawless pop symphonies and inventing, with the other Beach Boys, the modern notion of California; he spent the other half dropping acid, playing piano in a sandbox and losing his mind. (The fact that his father had physically and psychologically abused him for years probably didn’t help.) His meaningful involvement with the Beach Boys was over by 1969, partly because he refused to climb out of bed. In 1975, his desperate wife enlisted the help of a therapist named Eugene Landy.
This decision probably saved Wilson’s life. And that would be a wholly admirable achievement on Landy’s part, were it not for the fact that he proceeded to take total control of the life he resurrected.
Landy’s method of treatment (a system he called “milieu therapy”) was extremely aggressive and adversarial; he threw water on the musician to get him out of bed. At first, this tough love got results: in 1976, the Beach Boys recorded the album “15 Big Ones,” and for the first time since 1964, Wilson traveled with the group on tour. But by 1982, things had collapsed again, and Wilson had somehow managed to become a 340-pound cocaine addict. Landy was called back. This time, his approach was even more radical: he isolated Wilson in Hawaii, prescribed him high doses of psychotropic drugs and proceeded to reconstitute his understanding of existence.
Landy conducted clandestine 24-hour therapy sessions; for years, he and Wilson lived together. Every conversation — every action — was an extension of the program. When Wilson appeared in public, Landy held up cardboard signs that told him how to feel (they said things like “POSITIVE” and “SMILE”). If Landy wasn’t around, Wilson was shadowed by two musclebound assistants. (When Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac tried to work with Wilson in the late ’80s, he called these henchmen “surf Nazis.”) Over time, Wilson took to referring to Landy as “my master” and turned over to him the reins of his semiresurrected career. Landy (who managed the jazz guitarist George Benson during the 1960s) began writing Wilson’s lyrics and taking 50 percent of his earnings, plus a monthly $35,000 fee. He became the beneficiary of the musician’s will. He produced Wilson’s 1988 solo record and engineered Wilson’s ghost-written autobiography, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice — My Own Story,” much of which lionized the brilliance of Dr. Eugene Landy. (Later, Wilson would admit that he didn’t even read the book he supposedly helped write.)
“People don’t know how to really justify the fact that he’s returned so completely, so they have to give it some sort of media concept that says Svengali-type brainwashing,” Landy would later say to critics of his methods. “But if I washed his brain, I’ve certainly washed out all the drugs, all the obese characteristics he had, his eating problems, his smoking problems, all the trouble that he had in his much-publicized prior life. We’ve washed it clean to be a healthy whole human being. If that’s brainwashing, then — yes, that’s what we did.”
Landy was accused by Wilson’s family of “grossly negligent conduct” for his treatment of the singer, and in 1989 he voluntarily surrendered his license to practice psychology in California. Wilson remained reverentially enamored with Landy throughout the ’90s, but he eventually renounced his “master” and now describes his years with the therapist in the language of a prisoner. Landy disappeared to New Mexico and Hawaii, where he practiced psychology until his death.
As with Barrett, it is difficult to separate Wilson’s madness from his brilliance; the two qualities seem completely intertwined, and that can make the music both men created feel unworldly and romantic. But in the end, which quality took over: madness or genius? Which quality dictated their careers? Barrett became a man who couldn’t do anything. Wilson became a man who’d do anything Eugene Landy told him to do. Ultimately, it was not a detachment from reality that made them geniuses; detachment made them unproductive and vulnerable. Contrary to popular mythology, you don’t make good records when you’re crazy. You make them when you’re not.
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