Artists with weird reputations who actually are weird

Cafe Society
1

Well, after the strange seeming artists who aren’t weird, I figured I’d finish it off. So many bizarre acting singers often have normal off-stage personalities. Marilyn Manson, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, and Gene Simmons were named in that other thread. Which makes sense–you think you’d want to take a break from your workaday persona, no?

The only person who seems like he was always genuinely odd was G.G. Allins. The crapping on stage and the hanging out with underage girls and indoctrinating them and that whole daytime TV show circuit. Unless that was a huge act and I was unaware of it.

Anyone else?

2

R. Crumb’s public and private personas are pretty interchangeable. And I understand a certain Michael Jackson has been in the news a bit lately. Also, Klaus Kinski, Roman Polanski, Werner Herzog, Bob Guccione and Wild Man Fischer seldom dissappoint(ed). (Some of them are dead, right?)

3

I always thought Kurt Cobain’s over the top fuck-the-world attitude was an act for the magazines and fans until he proved he really was that messed up beyond any doubt.

4

Prince is kind of weird. A lot of people think he’s really weird, but that’s mostly because they don’t know the full story and motivations behind some of his strange behaviors. A lot of people think he’s gay, even though there’s not ever been any hint of that in his 30+year career. He is eccentric and a little weird, I’ll grant.

5

Wild Man Fischer qualifies, I’m sure – there’s no way that guy’s behaviour was all an act.

**Zoogz Rift **-- a brilliant and intense guitarist who seemed about a half-step from being some hulking glaring street loon.

And probably most of us remember the late, lamented Wesley Willis.

6

Andy Dick comes to mind.

7

Kinky, kinky, kinky. Richard “Kinky” Friedman. Whatever else the man may be, he is definitely not a phony.

8

I don’t know her name, but that lady who has had repeated cosmetic surgeries where she now resembles a cat in a freakish way.

9

To be fair, he had a legitimate mental illness.

10

Jocelyn Wildenstein

11

I once heard a Houston radio talk show host talking about the many celebrities he’d interviewed over the years, and he said that, without a doubt, the strangest celebrity he’d ever met was Tiny TIm.

Oh, it’s NOT that he always spoke in falsetto. His public persona WAS an act. It’s just that his real personality was at least as bizarre as the make-believe personality he showed the public.

This radio host had interviewed hundreds of celebrities, and he’d gotten used to the fact that some celebs who act outrageous or crazy on the air would change peronalities completely and become either very “normal,” even shy or subdued once they’d cut to a commercial.

But what he found was that, during commercials, Tiny Tim would drop his falsetto voice, resume speaking in his normal deep voice, and then… begin talking about how he always wore disposable diapers, and how America was the greatest country in the world because we invented Hefty bags, which allowed him to dispose of germ-infested things.

The real Herbert Khaury was, apparently, crazier than the character he played.

12

How about Crispin Glover?

13

First one I thought of. Remember his Letterman appearance? And he collects wax models of body parts.

And he’s named “Crispin”. That’s gotta warp a kid.

14

Until we find out that the whole “I want to be a rapper” thing is just an act, I’m going to say Joaquin Phoenix.

15

Is Billy Bob Thorton’s interview where he got pissy about the interviewer mentioning his movie work enough to make him weird? Or is that just assholish?

16

Salvatore Dali. His life was his art.

17

Three notable British eccentrics, my favorite kind of people:

Screaming Lord Sutch – if we’re going to talk about monster raving loonies, where better to start than the original Loony himself, the founder of the U.K.'s Official Monster Raving Loony Party? Although he ended up a fringe politician/performance artist, he started out as a musician, with songs like “Jack the Ripper”, and continued making music throughout his political “career”.

Jaz Coleman, composer, producer, songwriter, singer, genre-hopping global-music genius (specialties: post-punk, metal, industrial, Czech folk, Arabic, Maori, and contemporary symphonic), and former frontman of the English rock group Killing Joke. Jaz is obsessed with the spectre of global eco-political-economic collapse (and right now it’s admittedly hard to dismiss his fears outright), has founded two self-sustaining “eco-villages” in the South Pacific and Chile, and has a book coming out soon about music and living in a self-sufficient style without money. I’ve read off-Wiki that he’s largely retired now to his own tiny, private island 100 miles off the coast of New Zealand. I’m not sure if he’s one of those island (or barge or platform-owning) kooks who claims an individual national sovereignty, but he’s pretty independent-minded and probably doesn’t pay taxes to anyone. (Well, he is trying to live without money, after all.) It wouldn’t surprise me if he has half his land covered with solar panels so he can live a modern life off the grid, but I’m just guessing.

Matt Bellamy, current frontman [singer, gtr., piano, and sole songwriter] for the band Muse. Tagged “Barmy Bellamy” and “Barking Mad Bellamy” by rock critics, Bellamy is known for his forthright defense of conspiracy theorizing as a necessary populist bulwark against the monopolizing of information by governments and media conglomerates. (I have to admit I agree with the basic concern over media access, but a better response to that concern is the citizen-journalist-blogger, not c-theorists per say.)

But Bellamy has apparently also drunk the conspiracy authors’ Flavor Aid, saying in interviews that he believes that mankind is descended from Martian colonists, that 9-11 was perpetrated by the U.S. government, and that he can communicate with the spirits of the dead. There’s a decent chance he was actually B.S.ing (or, as the Brits would put it, taking the piss out of) some of these interviewers, and he has a reputation for saying some other outrageous things. (No one’s ever been able to get a straight answer from Matt about what the lyrics to “Plug In Baby” really mean; once he said it was about puppies genetically engineered to never grow up. I think the best theory is that it’s his love song to his favorite guitar… but since he was 'shrooms when he wrote it, it probably doesn’t really mean anything.) Nevertheless, the Muse discography is punctuated by lots of songs with weirdly apocalyptic and outer-space themes: alien signals and invasions, civil war on Mars, astronauts with cabin fever, etc.

Other eccentric Bellamy tidbits: one of the first things he splurged on when the band started to make money was… a jet pack. As in James Bond, You Only Live Twice, strap it on when you need to make a quick getaway… only Matt’s jet pack has a propeller. (I can only hope he doesn’t get himself killed with it.) And he used to trace his veins in blue ink… it wasn’t a heroin thing (he occasionally does mushrooms, but supposedly never anything else), he just liked doing it.

And he’s had more than his share of outlandish hairstyles, flamboyant costumes and metrosexual outfits, and generally doesn’t shy from acting in ways (like skipping across stages… how many American rockers would be caught dead skipping? Strutting, yes, running, yes, but never skipping) that feed speculative rumors about his sexuality. The thing is, he’s engaged to his girlfriend of six years, so if he’s really straight or mostly straight (and I believe he is; for one thing, there was that incident from maybe a couple of years ago when he apparently tried to pick up the mother of one of the **Arctic Monkeys **in a bar… while that band was also there), he’s unusually comfortable with projecting the whole sexual ambiguity thing. (As are his bandmates, who are similarly accomodating.)