Wild Man Fischer
He was famous, but he was broke.
Don’t equate fame with riches, certainly don’t equate it with quality. But the best artists just don’t understand the system, all they can do is create. Which is why they get ripped off and become disillusioned, like the two guys in Badfinger who committed suicide.
Wild Man Fischer was an institution. A club you became a member of in high school or your college dorm. Someone cool but friendly, not a football player or a cheerleader, would start talking about a record, with a smile on his or her face, and begin singing…
Merry-go
Merry-go
Merry-go-round
Huh?
It all came down to Frank Zappa. Who didn’t kowtow to the mainstream, rather barged in upon it. He didn’t wait for mass success to create a vanity label, signing acts that sound nothing like him to get rich, like Madonna did with Maverick, rather early in his career Frank started two labels, Bizarre and Straight, to sign acts that aligned with his sensibility. Those that were just a little bit different. That caused the audience to think. That could not be ignored. There was Captain Beefheart.
And Larry "Wild Man" Fischer.
You remember the cover of that initial double album. With his electric hair?
Maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re just too young. Maybe you equate music with money, learning about the riches of Led Zeppelin or seeing all those acts on MTV.
But once upon a time, it was about music.
And it was certainly about creativity.
Could you question convention?
There was an irreverence that doesn’t exist today. Even SNL, it winks at not only its audience, but its network. Really, we’re safe, we want to go on to movie careers.
But once upon a time, SNL was dangerous.
And when Belushi imitated Cocker we all got the joke. Because we’d all seen the "Woodstock" movie. Because we were all beholden to music, the hippest medium.
Actually, we’re at the beginning of a new golden era. You don’t need a tastemaker or a bank or a label to play. Then again, not only have we not yet found the new Frank Zappa, we’ve got tons of barely talented wannabes, doing it for a while before they sell out to the corporation, hopefully.
Zappa was a lifer. He made music, that’s what he did. He didn’t want to be broke, but he didn’t change careers because music did not pay enough.
Wild Man Fischer was a lifer too.
Until now.
Larry "Wild Man" Fischer just died. Read the below obituaries, they’re pretty good.
And it’s not so much his music we mourn, but the era. When music surprised you, when it was peopled by the best and the brightest, when instead of trying to get in bed with the man, you didn’t trust him.
Frank signed Alice Cooper. The GTOs. It was all outrageous.
But not without meaning.
It’s the end of an era…
