Larry Wild Man Fischer, Outsider Musician, Dies at 66
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: June 17, 2011
Wild Man Fischer, a mentally ill street musician who became a darling of the pop music industry in the 1960s and as a result enjoyed four decades of strange, intermittent and often ill-fitting celebrity, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 66.
The cause was heart failure, said Josh Rubin, a filmmaker whose documentary portrait of Mr. Fischer, “dErailRoaDed,” was released in 2005. (The film’s title, taken from one of Mr. Fischer’s songs, is a word he coined to describe the radical dislocation he often felt.)
Mr. Fischer, whose first name was Larry, had lived with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder since he was a teenager. Since 2004 he had resided in an assisted-living facility for mental patients in Van Nuys, Calif.
A singer-songwriter, Mr. Fischer was sometimes called the grandfather of Outsider music, but he was an outsider even by Outsider standards.
His voice was raspy and very loud. There was little tune to his melodies, and his lyrics had the repetitiveness and seeming simplicity of nursery rhymes. His singing, typically a cappella, was punctuated by vocal effects like hooting, wailing and shouting.
Whether Mr. Fischer was a naïve genius whose work embodied primal truths, or simply a madman who practiced a musicalized form of ranting, is the subject of continuing debate.
But he attracted — and retains — a cult following, which over time has included well-known figures in the music business. Among them were Frank Zappa, who produced Mr. Fischer’s first album; the child actor-turned-musician Bill Mumy; the radio host Dr. Demento; and the singer Rosemary Clooney, with whom Mr. Fischer recorded a duet.
Mr. Fischer made several albums, toured sporadically and performed occasionally on television, including, in 1968, on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.”
His best-known song was almost certainly “Merry-Go- Round.” The tune has a faint Caribbean lilt. (In the recording studio, Mr. Fischer was often provided with instrumental accompaniment.) The lyrics, on first hearing, can strike the listener as a joke:
Come on, let’s merry-go, MERRY-go, merry-go-round.
Boop-boop-boop. [This is Mr. Fischer making a calliope-like noise.]
Merry-go, MERRY-go, merry-go-round.
Boop-boop-boop. ...
In the end, though, the joke — postmodern and self-referential — is on the listener: Once heard, the song circles unremittingly around in the head like a carousel that can never be stilled.
Lawrence Wayne Fischer was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 6, 1944. From his youth on, whenever he was in a manic upswing — a state of intense creative energy he would call the “pep” — songs cascaded out of him.
At 16, after he threatened his mother with a knife, she had him committed to a mental institution. He was committed again a few years later.
After being released for the second time in his late teens, he lived mainly on the streets. Dreaming of becoming a famous singer, he performed in local talent shows.
He gained a small following and by the mid-1960s was opening for the soul singer Solomon Burke. He later opened for Alice Cooper, the Byrds and others.
Most of the time, though, Mr. Fischer stood on the Sunset Strip, where for a dime, or even a nickel, he would sing for passers-by. Mr. Zappa discovered him there and in 1968 released “An Evening With Wild Man Fischer” on his label Bizarre Records.
Mr. Fischer eventually fell out with Mr. Zappa, as he did with nearly everyone in his orbit. He languished until the mid-1970s, when he was almost single-handedly responsible for the birth of Rhino Records.
Rhino had been a record store in Los Angeles; Mr. Fischer, a habitué, recorded a promotional single, “Go to Rhino Records,” in 1975. Demand for it proved so great that it catapulted the store’s owners into the record-producing business.
For Rhino, Mr. Fischer recorded three albums: “Wildmania,” “Pronounced Normal” and “Nothing Scary.” The last two were produced by the comedy rock duo Barnes & Barnes, in real life Robert Haimer and Mr. Mumy.
Mr. Fischer’s other songs include “My Name Is Larry,” “I’m Selling Peanuts for the Dodgers” and “I Wish I Was a Comic Book.” (That aspiration, at least, was realized: he was featured in several comic books over the years.)
With Ms. Clooney, he recorded the single “It’s a Hard Business.”
Mr. Fischer is survived by a brother, David, of Agoura Hills, Calif., and a sister, Joyce Sherman, of West Hills, Calif.
In 2004, after a severe episode of paranoia, Mr. Fischer was placed in the assisted-living facility and put on medication. Mr. Rubin, the filmmaker, whom Mr. Fischer had telephoned, often in high excitement, 20 or 30 times a day for several years, visited him there many times.
“After he went to the facility, the phone calls just stopped,” Mr. Rubin said in an interview on Friday. “The ‘pep’ was gone.”
Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: June 17, 2011
Wild Man Fischer, a mentally ill street musician who became a darling of the pop music industry in the 1960s and as a result enjoyed four decades of strange, intermittent and often ill-fitting celebrity, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 66.
The cause was heart failure, said Josh Rubin, a filmmaker whose documentary portrait of Mr. Fischer, “dErailRoaDed,” was released in 2005. (The film’s title, taken from one of Mr. Fischer’s songs, is a word he coined to describe the radical dislocation he often felt.)
Mr. Fischer, whose first name was Larry, had lived with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder since he was a teenager. Since 2004 he had resided in an assisted-living facility for mental patients in Van Nuys, Calif.
A singer-songwriter, Mr. Fischer was sometimes called the grandfather of Outsider music, but he was an outsider even by Outsider standards.
His voice was raspy and very loud. There was little tune to his melodies, and his lyrics had the repetitiveness and seeming simplicity of nursery rhymes. His singing, typically a cappella, was punctuated by vocal effects like hooting, wailing and shouting.
Whether Mr. Fischer was a naïve genius whose work embodied primal truths, or simply a madman who practiced a musicalized form of ranting, is the subject of continuing debate.
But he attracted — and retains — a cult following, which over time has included well-known figures in the music business. Among them were Frank Zappa, who produced Mr. Fischer’s first album; the child actor-turned-musician Bill Mumy; the radio host Dr. Demento; and the singer Rosemary Clooney, with whom Mr. Fischer recorded a duet.
Mr. Fischer made several albums, toured sporadically and performed occasionally on television, including, in 1968, on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.”
His best-known song was almost certainly “Merry-Go- Round.” The tune has a faint Caribbean lilt. (In the recording studio, Mr. Fischer was often provided with instrumental accompaniment.) The lyrics, on first hearing, can strike the listener as a joke:
Come on, let’s merry-go, MERRY-go, merry-go-round.
Boop-boop-boop. [This is Mr. Fischer making a calliope-like noise.]
Merry-go, MERRY-go, merry-go-round.
Boop-boop-boop. ...
In the end, though, the joke — postmodern and self-referential — is on the listener: Once heard, the song circles unremittingly around in the head like a carousel that can never be stilled.
Lawrence Wayne Fischer was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 6, 1944. From his youth on, whenever he was in a manic upswing — a state of intense creative energy he would call the “pep” — songs cascaded out of him.
At 16, after he threatened his mother with a knife, she had him committed to a mental institution. He was committed again a few years later.
After being released for the second time in his late teens, he lived mainly on the streets. Dreaming of becoming a famous singer, he performed in local talent shows.
He gained a small following and by the mid-1960s was opening for the soul singer Solomon Burke. He later opened for Alice Cooper, the Byrds and others.
Most of the time, though, Mr. Fischer stood on the Sunset Strip, where for a dime, or even a nickel, he would sing for passers-by. Mr. Zappa discovered him there and in 1968 released “An Evening With Wild Man Fischer” on his label Bizarre Records.
Mr. Fischer eventually fell out with Mr. Zappa, as he did with nearly everyone in his orbit. He languished until the mid-1970s, when he was almost single-handedly responsible for the birth of Rhino Records.
Rhino had been a record store in Los Angeles; Mr. Fischer, a habitué, recorded a promotional single, “Go to Rhino Records,” in 1975. Demand for it proved so great that it catapulted the store’s owners into the record-producing business.
For Rhino, Mr. Fischer recorded three albums: “Wildmania,” “Pronounced Normal” and “Nothing Scary.” The last two were produced by the comedy rock duo Barnes & Barnes, in real life Robert Haimer and Mr. Mumy.
Mr. Fischer’s other songs include “My Name Is Larry,” “I’m Selling Peanuts for the Dodgers” and “I Wish I Was a Comic Book.” (That aspiration, at least, was realized: he was featured in several comic books over the years.)
With Ms. Clooney, he recorded the single “It’s a Hard Business.”
Mr. Fischer is survived by a brother, David, of Agoura Hills, Calif., and a sister, Joyce Sherman, of West Hills, Calif.
In 2004, after a severe episode of paranoia, Mr. Fischer was placed in the assisted-living facility and put on medication. Mr. Rubin, the filmmaker, whom Mr. Fischer had telephoned, often in high excitement, 20 or 30 times a day for several years, visited him there many times.
“After he went to the facility, the phone calls just stopped,” Mr. Rubin said in an interview on Friday. “The ‘pep’ was gone.”
Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/
Larry Wild Man Fischer - On Jimmy Kimmel Live (2004)
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