Dead Man’s Folk: Lou Waxman on Tim Hardin 4

It is embarrassing to admit, but almost all Lou knows about Tim Hardin is that he died.  Young.  In 1980, at the age of 39, of a heroin overdose.  This is a common occurrence in the music biz.  The 27 Club is a club because a lot of musicians are in it.  Groucho Marx died at 86 by the way.  There is a book about itby Howard Sounes.  It is 384 pages.  Even Gene Simmons took a crack at writing about it.  In the music industry, dying is a career move.  Ask Robert Johnson.  Or Kurt Cobain.  Rolling Stone got it right with Jim Morrison in 1981:  “He’s Hot, He’s Sexy, He’s Dead”.  That is how you get on the cover of the Rolling Stone.  Take that Dr. Hook.

In the kitchen

With Robert Johnson

And the Lizard King

Jimi getting down

On a Little Wing

Blind Owl’s

In the yard

Staring hard

At a Keith Moon

Shannon Hoon’s

Got a bee

In his bonnet

Keats writing

A sonnet

By the lake

With Nick Drake

About dying

Too soon

Pearl’s in

The driveway

In a Mercedes Benz

Mama Cass’s

In the backseat

With her

So-called friends

James Dean’s

On dead man’s curve

Coming round

The bend

Eddie Cochran’s

In the passenger seat

You know how

This one ends

Brian Jones

Says the water’s fine

Jeff Buckley

And Dennis Wilson

Are right behind

Buddy Holly’s

Arriving in first class

He’s dead tired

And needs

A place

To crash

Kurt Cobain’s

Shotgunning a beer

Bon Scott

Has had one

Too many

We fear

Amy Winehouse’s

Calling in

From rehab

She wishes

She was here

Duane Allman’s

Also calling

He says

The coast

Is clear

We’re all

In the kitchen

At the Morrison Hotel

Sylvia’s minding

The oven

The last supper’s

Looking swell

John Bonham’s

Says we’re

On the stairway

To heaven

So long as

We live

Like hell

 

This is true in all the arts.  Literature?  Sylvia Plath, check.  Film?  James Dean, check?  Art? Basquiat, check.  The only reason you may know Francesca Woodman, a photographer with a cult following, is that she died young.  Her suicide was her most famous work of art.

Francesca Woodman

Death has

A fetish

He likes

Them young

The art world

It makes

Their day

When a girl

Plays the role

Of setting sun

 

Freddie Herko is the epitome of this phenomenon.  You ever heard of him?  Probably not.  But if you have, you probably only know how he died.  Freaky.

The Romantics made dying young into an art form.  That said, Jesus died at 33, and that is an entire religion.  Probably it goes back to the Greeks.  All of Western civilization goes back to the Greeks.  We haven’t progressed since then.  Lou, what about science and technology?  That shit is so boring.  Philosophy? Well, that shit is so yesterday.

So, Lou will go back to the Romantics.  Keats, Shelley, and Byron.  Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse.  While they were alive, they made a celebrity out of Thomas Chatterton, who died at 18 before he even got started.  Poor Wordsworth lived too long.  And fucked up his poetic legacy.  If he had died in 1805, his bibliography would be much tighter.  And better.

Lou found a copy of Tim Hardin 4 at The Vogue.  This album is often dismissed as a historical document.  A curiosity for the devoted.  Lou doesn’t know about that.  It sounded pretty good to Lou.  The album is a demo from 1964 and was released in 1969.  Consensus says the This Is Tim Hardin does this bluesy style better.  Lou will have to check that out.  Tim Hardin 1 has “Reason to Believe” on it.  A Tim Hardin original.  You might know it from Rod Stewart.  Or The Carpenters.  Or Bobby Darin.  Or Peter, Paul, and Mary.  Or God help Lou, Wilson Phillips.  You get the idea.  Tim Hardin 2 has “If I Were a Carpenter”.  Another Hardin original.  You might know it from Bobby Darin.  Or . . .  Or . . .  You know the drill.  

More embarrassment.  Lou gets Tim Hardin confused with Tim Buckley.  Another musician who died young of a drug overdose.  At 28.  Jeff Buckley, Tim’s son, learned a lot from his father,including dying young.  Jeff drowned at age 30.  And so it goesin the annals of music.  Lou will be on the lookout for more Tim Hardin.  And Tim Buckley.  And Jeff Buckley for that matter.  Dying young captures Lou’s attention.  Sad but true.  You know you are all in the same boat.  Death is fascinating and what we all live for.

If you do not have the good sense to die young, you can always disappear.  The problem with disappearing is that you can be found.  And exploited.  Robert Johnson died.  Skip James and Mississippi John Hurt disappeared and were found and paraded around like sideshow freaks.  Maybe it is better that way.  Or maybe Robert Johnson would have been happy to appear at Newport.  He would much rather have performed at Carnegie Hall in 1938.  Lou can go either way on all this.  

Rodriguez disappeared.  And was found.  They made a documentary about it called Searching for Sugar Man.  The film won an Academy Award.  Did Rodriguez really benefit from getting found to that level?  Lou has his doubts.  Vashti Bunyan, who recorded Just Another Diamond Day in 1970, disappeared and was found.  Give her a listen.  She was part of the acid folk scene in England in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  This is as fascinating a music scene and community as there ever was.  Electric Eden:  Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music by Rob Young is the book to read.  As well as Joe Boyd’s White Bicycles.  Recommended both.  Bunyan returned to record a couple of albums and had her day in the sunshine of the English countryside.  Maybe that is a happy ending.

Much harder is to disappear and stay disappeared.  Connie Converse has managed to do this almost impossible task.  And not for lack of people trying to find her.  She is considered one of the first singer-songwriters.  Before Bob Dylan.  Before Joni Mitchell.  She was at it in the 1950s and barely recorded anything.  By the early 1960s, she abandoned recording altogether and became an activist.  Then she decided to find herself in 1974, packed up her Volkswagen Beetle, and disappeared.  There were rumors of her in Kansas and Oklahoma.  A private investigator was hired by the family butultimately not pursued.  Converse was gone.  But not to music history.  In 2004, Gene Deitch played some of her recordings on the radio show Spinning on Air and people became interested.  Her music was collected and reissued with 17 songs appearing on How Sad, How Lovely in 2009.  Howard Fishman wrote a biography, To Anyone Who Ever Asks, in 2023. Converse is now a footnote and a curiosity.  That is the way it works.  But kudos to Converse for remaining missing.  To be missing when people desperately want to find you is a true accomplishment.  It is like winning at a game of hide and seek.

But best of all, you can never have existed.  That is true of Bob Dylan.  The most lauded musician of them all.  He is a complete fabrication.  A complete unknown if you will.  Great artists, like great art, are not born, they are invented.

Suggested Sites and Sounds:

The 27 Club:  A History:  27: A History of the 27 Club Through The Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse

News Flash!! The Lizard King Is Dead:  Jim Morrison: He's Hot, He's Sexy and He's Dead

Francesca Woodman Lives!!:  The Woodmans | Full Documentary Movie | Francesca Woodman

Freddie Herko’s Final Performance:  Andy Warhol Star, Fred Herko Danced himself 2 D3ath

Thomas Chatterton: The Romance with Dying Young:  Thomas Chatterton - The Myth of the Doomed Poet (BBC)

Searching for Sugar Man:  Searching for Sugar Man Official Trailer #1 (2012) - Documentary HD

Diamond Day:  Vashti Bunyan - Diamond Day Video

Electric Eden:  Electric Eden - Wikipedia

White Bicycles:  Give It a Ride:  White Bicycles - Serpent's Tail

Nothing Here Now But the Recordings:  We Lived Alone: The Connie Converse Documentary - YouTube

— Lou Waxman