By Vish KhannaWhimsical curmudgeon Stephin Merritt is undeniably one of the most significant artists of the past 20 years. A clever wordsmith equally devoted to Human League and Cole Porter, Merritt's nascent musical explorations produced the lo-fi, synthesized sound of the Magnetic Fields. Even then, with his intellectual interest in diverse pop and folk instrumentation and the timeless art of charming, sentimental songs, glimmers of a contemporary pop genius shone through. Still, few might have predicted then that this bluntly opinionated, morose-voiced, gay New Yorker would craft America's most touching and brilliant love songs, leading fans through diverse projects like the 6ths, the Gothic Archies, Future Bible Heroes, and treks into musical theatre, film soundtracks, and TV commercials. Audacious, prolific, and provocative, Merritt is a renaissance man worth knowing.
1969 to 1987 Stephen Merritt is born in New York City on an undetermined date; while some sources cite January 17, 1966 (which doesn't mesh with when he likely graduated high school), Merritt never divulges his actual age in public. He doesn't know his father, Virgin Islands-based folk singer Scott Fagan, an RCA and Columbia recording artist in the late '60s who had a brief affair with his mother. "The fact is I have never seen the little knobby noggin in my life, and I wasn't even sure that he existed until very recently," Fagan states in an interview on his web site. "I am delighted to have become aware of Stephin and his music. I'm amazed at how much alike we sound and further, how unbelievably familiar the songwriting is to me considering that we have never met. I'm equally amazed at the many parallels in our lives. It is really extraordinary. I am happy for his success." In recalling his earliest days, Merritt claims he was "conceived by barefoot hippies on a houseboat in St. Thomas." He's an epileptic baby raised as a Buddhist by his mother, an English teacher. She gives him the surname Merritt, after the man she's married to when he's born. "Sometimes very poor," the pair lived in "33 houses in 23 years," throughout the Northeastern United States, including a brief stint in West Berlin when she was married to an army man for a short period. Finding Pete Seeger's "Little White Duck" to be lacking in lyrical sophistication, Merritt, convinced he could do better, is writing songs at four years old. By the time he's 14, Merritt and his mother are settled near Boston, Massachusetts and he's playing guitar and synthesizer and begins four-track recording; wary of his musical pursuits, his mother urges him not to become a professional musician. Merritt prefers reading and music to socializing, hates sports, and is often threatened with violence as a young student. He enrols in the Cambridge School of Weston, a bohemian, progressive prep school where Merritt studies theory in the music program. "I'm a professional musician because that's what I've had the most success in. I was told I had promise in several other areas: poetry, acting, science," Merritt tells the Village Voice. After watching a TV show that recommends misspelling your name to track which junk mail lists you're on, Merritt conceives of multiple spellings of Stephen, his given name, for different aspects of his life. "Stephin" is the musician, and he legally changes his name. He meets Claudia Gonson and, even though she is the cheery, extroverted opposite of Merritt, they bond. They form a band in high school called the Zinnias with Merritt on guitar and Gonson on drums before she leaves Boston to attend Columbia University. Merritt starts a project called Buffalo Rome with vocalist Shirley Simms, which results in a self-released cassette.
POP & ROCK: Beach House - Bloom
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Posted by Nameless Poseur On 2011-11-15 10:12:14So What's the matter with That? Any Questions?
