In the play Amadeus - not necessarily all that historically accurate, I know - Wolfgang is a crude, immature twit who happens to write note-perfect scores
in The Dark Stuff by Nick Kent, he writes of Tony Asher, Brian Wilson’s writing partner for some of Wilson’s best work, as saying that Wilson was just not that smart, with ticky-tacky trailer park taste and just clueless about most of life except when it came to capturing the music in his head.
Stevie Ray Vaughn was known for not being all that smart, never bathing, etc. His guitar tech (Cesar Diaz?) - who may have an agenda, I don’t know - described how Stevie didn’t have the vocabulary to describe what he wanted tone-wise and having to be hand-held has he built his sound.
Kurt Cobain seems like he might be this type of Musical Idiot Savant, too from what I have read.
What is up with this category of musical genius? It is like they have had all of their humanity, intellect, emotions, etc. channeled into their music and have sacrficed any ability to cope with regular life as a result.
Not really sure where I want this OP to do - I was just starting The Dark Stuff - brilliant so far, btw - and was struck by how clueless Wilson is…
I was hoping I’d seen the last of the moronic in-joke of using “Og” to mean “God”. Apparently not.
As for the question, I’d say that human intellect is complex and multifaceted. As a generalization it appears that the two hemispheres of the brain dominate different tasks; music and art are generally considered “right brain” activities while verbal expression and logic are mostly “left brain”. I’ve probably got that wrong, and I’m sure there are folks here with a far better understanding of the subject, but my attempted point is that a congenital talent for music may have to do with a completely different area of the brain than is involved in “normal” intellectual expression.
That’s really no help at all, is it? But at least it accounts for the kid with the banjo in Deliverance.
Upon hearing many of their lyrics, I always assumed that the members of Radiohead were intellectual, eloquent poets. Then I saw the 1998 documentary film Meeting People Is Easy, where in interviews they had trouble putting two words together.
Thanks for your concern, Baldwin - but it wasn’t meant to be an “in joke.” I specifically chose to use it because I was going for “from a Higher Power” without trying to name which one, and “from a Higher Power” is too long to type for a thread title. If there is more baggage attached to the usage of the term “Og” I am not familiar with it, nor was it my intent to invoke that baggage.
I vote we be done with that hijack in this thread - sound fair?
I appreciate your comments about the OP - and suspect you’re right. One aspect of my OP is that it seems like the artists mentioned not only have an acutely-developed music intelligence, but a proptionately undeveloped intelligence in many other areas.
Colin Greenwood, at least, is very articulate, notoriously so, and something of a chatterbox. His brother Jonny, though intelligent, is painfully shy and often awkward as hell, and so widely talented that he may qualify somewhat for the musical psuedo-savant category. Thom Yorke is…well…he’s complicated. :rolleyes: I thought of him on reading the OP; he’s not so much a lout, but he spent much of his career rambling madly, and has a bit of a brutish temper. Or had - he’s become much more healthy and sane in recent years, it seems. Phil Selway is so infrequently interviewed it’s hard to say, but he and Ed O’Brien seem the most ‘normal’ of the band.
MPIE is a poor documentary, more a record of the disintegration of the band during an incredibly stressful three-year tour than a documentary of their true personalities.
I agree with the OP’s classification of Brian Wilson, though his meds might have something to do with it these days. I’d also nominate Ozzy Osbourne, though he’s not exactly Brian Wilson musically.
I’ll second that - the thing is supposed to be about how hard it is to go on tour. The band is so burned out in that movie that I wouldn’t use it as a way to gauge their personalities.
Could you go into detail about it? What I’ve read - snippets of books and reviews of the major works - he was pretty involved in marketing his band, too. You’re also talking about a guy who was addicted to drugs and had serious depression all his life, so I’m not sure how fair a read you can get on his cluelessness.
John Mellencamp is very eloquent with his songs of midwest angst and the travails of the guy from small towns, going nowhere fast, but in interviews he comes off as just the worst trailer trash moron imaginable.
I sometimes suspect that his ofttimes writing partner (and friend since childhood) George M. Green is the literacy behind his best songs.
I’ve never been much of a Mellencamp fan, perhaps because I remember when he called himself Johnny Cougar which made it difficult for me to take him seriously.
However, he calls in to the Bob and Tom show occasionally. Based on those interviews, he seems quite well spoken, quick witted and down to earth.
To my knowledge, FernForest is right - John Mellencamp didn’t want to take on the stage name and once he got popular, “evolved” his name away from his.
Marley23 - as for Cobain, well, I read Azerrad’s “Come As You Are” (if you haven’t read his book “Our Band Could be Your Life” you should - excellent overview of indie bands before Nirvana broke open the alt scene).
Anyway, your points about drugs and depression are obviously true, but the book, IIRC, seems to suggest that there was a simply, unfocused pain to his existence. Unlike another musical spokesman for his generation, John Lennon - who was terrifyingly intelligent and angry and wielded his wit like knife - Cobain seemed more lost and detached.
Keeping the comparison going, Lennon was practiced in songcraft and when he evolved his style to the tone-poems like I am the Walrus (where the words are not meant to mean anything as much as evoke an emotional response) there was a conscious decision to try this, influenced by drugs.
Cobain seemed to have just strung words together simply to enable his howl of rage to come out. “An Albino, a mulatto, a mosquito - palomino” - sure the song captures the anger of his generation, but he couldn’t come close to articulating what it worked. In fact, he was just a confused about it as anyone - and I would surmise that that contributed to his downfall…
All conjecture on my part, but in reading about him, Novoselic, Grohl and others around Cobain, nobody discussed a thoughtful, articulate person making conscious decisions about songcraft…
I have a tremendous admiration for Miles Davis’ work, but I know nothing about his personal life. Why would someone consider it appropriate to include him on this thread?