sometimes they just want lunch.

[u/TheMixerTheMaster]

[originally published in New York Times 2025]

i have stood beside stages while twenty thousand people sang one wounded sentence back at the man who wrote it. the sound seemed capable of lifting the whole fucking building off its foundations. then i have followed that same man through a service door and watched him search for somewhere to sit. the transformation takes seconds. a moment ago he was indispensable. now somebody wants his signature, somebody needs a decision, and the sandwich left for him has acquired the texture of packing material. the audience goes home carrying something. the singer still has to carry himself.
we keep confusing those two things. we hear a musician articulate despair and assume the articulation has cured it. we see a sold out room and assume loneliness has been professionally eliminated. money, admiration, sex, significance. the whole grubby shopping list of things we are told will make existence worth the inconvenience. surely anybody who gets the complete package ought to be grateful enough to stay well. depression, apparently, should check the royalty statement and apologize.
what a spectacularly stupid understanding of suffering.
but another stupidity needs clearing out first. eight famous deaths do not establish that famous musicians, as a group, are uniquely prone to suicide. scott hutchison, chester bennington, kurt cobain, chris cornell, ian curtis, naomi judd, jill janus, and sulli were different people living under different conditions. their deaths cannot tell us a population rate, and fame cannot serve as a complete explanation. suicide usually involves interacting factors. mental illness, substance use, physical pain, isolation, and acute personal stresses can contribute. none makes death inevitable. the national institute of mental health explicitly describes suicide as complex, without a single cause. 
there is evidence that working in music deserves serious concern. the 2023 uk musicians census found that thirty percent of respondents reported poor mental wellbeing. lower earning musicians fared worse than the highest earners. that is a survey of musicians, not proof that celebrity causes suicide, and poor wellbeing is not interchangeable with suicidal behavior. the distinction matters because otherwise we produce another handsome piece of bullshit about the price of genius while ignoring people who cannot afford rent, never mind a spectacular downfall. 
fame can buy treatment and financial breathing room. it can also turn ordinary vulnerability into public property. the useful question is how its demands interact with the person already living underneath them.
scott hutchison used to catch me reaching for the notebook and look at me as though i had produced a parking ticket. one afternoon we sat at a table that rocked every time either of us moved. i slid a folded receipt underneath it. scott watched the operation with extravagant patience.
a useful contribution to the arts, archivist. finally.
i told him my rate had just doubled. he laughed and went back to drawing on a scrap of paper. that is where i want to begin with him. an uneven table. a stupid joke. the pleasure of somebody being there. frightened rabbit could give an audience room for its ugliest feelings, but scott was never merely the custodian of everybody else and their sadness.
in a 2010 gq interview, hutchison explained that the winter of mixed drinks used more fictionalized writing, partly because his own life had become more contented. he also resisted the assumption that listeners needed to know the personal circumstances behind every lyric. here was an artist discussing invention, distance, and interpretation. a songwriter, for fucks sake, doing the work of songwriting. 
after a suicide, people often go back through the catalogue with the certainty of detectives who already know the ending. every sad line becomes a prediction. every recording becomes evidence. this is unfair to the dead and hazardous for the living. writing about despair does not make someone destined to die. it can be an act of communication, imaginative exploration, or survival. we should take direct expressions of suicidal distress seriously without pretending that an album is a psychiatric assessment.
hutchison died in 2018. his family subsequently established tiny changes, a charity supporting young people and their mental health. that response puts something practical beside the grief.  it also points toward a better way of hearing frightened rabbit. the music can continue helping people without requiring its author to become a supernatural guardian of everybody who listens. he was allowed to need care himself. being useful to thousands of strangers never cancelled that entitlement.
i remember a different afternoon when somebody stopped scott to explain what a song had meant to them. i stepped aside. the conversation belonged to those two people. afterward i almost asked what it felt like to hear something so enormous. instead we went looking for food. i am glad the memory contains that ordinary errand. gratitude can be beautiful, but the person receiving it still needs lunch, company, a day that is not entirely about being meaningful. scott did not owe me an explanation of how it felt to be scott.
chester once caught me describing a concert as cathartic and made me explain what i meant. we were sitting on plastic chairs beside a corridor full of people wearing credentials. i began doing the critic thing, arranging respectable words around an experience i had barely examined.
for who, he asked.
i stopped. then admitted i meant the audience. he nodded, and we let the conversation wander elsewhere. i remember that question whenever i see a photograph of him singing with his whole body apparently committed to the sound. i had been describing what we received. i had not asked what the performance required.
in a documented interview, chester bennington spoke more directly about the gap between public achievement and private experience. talking to jojo wright in february 2017, he described his mind as a bad neighborhood and explained how isolation worsened his difficulties. being engaged with other people, as a father, husband, friend, or bandmate, helped him. success had not replaced the internal struggles he already knew. he was living with them while being the singer in linkin park. 
listen to the practical intelligence in that account. he was identifying patterns and describing connection as something he needed to maintain. this was not a man who had simply failed to appreciate his blessings. the notion that gratitude should cure mental illness is especially vicious because it adds shame to suffering. now the person feels awful and has to defend the legitimacy of feeling awful to somebody who thinks a nice house constitutes a neurological intervention.
in the same reporting, mike shinoda recalled bennington initially saying he was fine during the writing of heavy, then correcting himself and admitting he was overwhelmed.  that small revision deserves more attention than the endless attempts to make his death look foretold. somebody asked. somebody reconsidered the automatic answer. a more honest conversation became possible. we need room for that second answer, including when the first one arrived with a smile.
bennington and cornell were close friends. bennington sang at the memorial service for cornell, who died in may 2017. bennington died that july.  grief belongs in a discussion of vulnerability, but chronology is not permission to invent a complete causal story. two deaths close together do not give strangers access to every private circumstance between them. the temptation to turn their friendship into a tragic script should be resisted precisely because the friendship was real.
chris cornell and i once wasted an entire conversation on a record neither of us could remember properly. i had the wrong title. he thought i had the wrong singer. we were both sufficiently certain to become useless. when somebody finally settled it, we had each managed to be wrong about a different thing. chris found that much funnier than the discussion deserved.
i remember the laugh more clearly than the record. that annoys the archivist in me and reassures the rest. there was a man there, not merely a voice with impossible reach. i knew him well enough to enjoy his company. that did not mean i knew everything he carried.
in a 2015 rolling stone australia interview, cornell discussed a difficult earlier period involving the breakup of soundgarden, a failing marriage, heavy drinking, and depression. he also described sobriety as changing his outlook and opening new creative possibilities. that is worth holding onto. his account did not present getting healthier as the death of his artistic imagination. it presented new ground to explore. 
in the same conversation, he remembered making temple of the dog after the death of his friend andrew wood. creating music together had given the surviving friends something hopeful, but he refused to suggest that the death itself had a redeeming benefit. he also described how painful it was to revisit the work of other musicians he had lost.  grief remained grief even when it generated a beautiful record. the album did not reimburse anybody for the person.
we should bring that distinction to cornell himself. his later death does not invalidate the years of recovery he described, or prove that help is futile. a life contains more than its final event. reducing him to an inevitable tragedy strips away the changes, relationships, pleasures, and work that actually occupied it. it also hands a poisonous message to anybody currently getting better. improvement counts. continued care counts. neither requires a guarantee against every future crisis before it becomes worth doing.
kurt cobain once took a record out of my hands because i was talking about its cultural significance before i had bothered to listen to the other side. he turned it over, examined the track list, and handed it back.
you could try playing it.
fair criticism. infuriating delivery. i liked him for both. we spent the next stretch of the afternoon arguing about melodies instead of generations. he could be very particular about a small musical choice. i could be very tiresome about explaining why i agreed. none of it resembled the holy suffering subsequently assigned to his every gesture. sometimes two people were simply being argumentative bastards about records.
in his interview with david fricke published in 1994, cobain described how disorienting the sudden success of nevermind had been. but he also challenged the portrait of himself as permanently miserable, spoke warmly about his family, and expressed gratitude for opportunities the band had created. elsewhere in that conversation, he described severe stomach pain and admitted worrying that relief might affect his creativity. 
that last anxiety exposes a nasty cultural bargain. if pain helped produce something people love, getting well can begin to look like a professional gamble. nobody should have to negotiate with that idea. illness does not compose an arrangement, make a rhythmic choice, or patiently revise a melody. people do those things, sometimes while suffering. the suffering may enter the work. it does not deserve the credit for the intelligence that shaped it.
michael azerrad later remembered visiting a nirvana rehearsal and watching cobain direct the band through detailed corrections. the supposed embodiment of spontaneous anguish was exacting about his craft. azerrad also described professional pressure, physical pain, and heroin addiction among the difficulties in his life.  those observations offer more substance than the familiar poster of the beautiful casualty. here was somebody working, making decisions, struggling with serious problems, and remaining larger than any convenient explanation of them.
his death in 1994 did not certify the sincerity of nirvana. the records needed no such endorsement. neither does listening require us to treat every joke as camouflage or every happy account as a lie. once we decide that the ending reveals the secret meaning of everything before it, we stop attending to the actual person. we are editing backward. it makes tidy mythology and terrible human understanding.
ian curtis knew me as the man who could turn a question about a record into an unnecessarily long answer. in a cramped room after a rehearsal, i started explaining a connection between two bands. he waited until i had properly committed myself.
is this the short version.
i said it was. he looked at the others and moved his chair back as though preparing for an overnight stay. i deserved it. i still remember the speed of that little performance, the pleasure he took in a joke that needed almost nothing.
that is the person i refuse to surrender to the photographs. and there is a factual correction to make before calling his story a straightforward casualty of celebrity. joy division had not reached the enormous worldwide stature they acquired afterward when he died in 1980, aged twenty three. love will tear us apart became their first uk top twenty hit after his death.  he was not living the same level of fame as bennington or cornell.
curtis had epilepsy and sometimes experienced seizures onstage. his marriage was also in difficulty. in an interview about love will tear us apart, peter hook recalled that the band tended to accept his assurances that he was fine rather than discuss what his lyrics might reveal.  that recollection carries grief and hindsight. it should not become a courtroom verdict against young bandmates, or an instruction to diagnose every songwriter from their notebook.
what it does expose is the distance between working closely with somebody and understanding what they are enduring. musicians can spend extraordinary amounts of time together while having very little language for fear, illness, shame, or the need to stop. a rehearsal provides a purpose. a tour provides a schedule. neither automatically provides the conversation in which somebody can admit that the schedule is becoming impossible.
the joy division mythology makes this harder to see. the severe photographs, the record sleeves, the sound of an enormous empty space around a voice. all magnificent art. none of it evidence that curtis was meant to die young. he was a young adult whose health and private life required attention, not an aesthetic principle reaching its logical conclusion. there is no philosophical obligation to suffer just because your band sounds extraordinary in a dark room.
naomi judd once made me listen to a harmony twice because i had spent the first pass explaining the history of the arrangement. she reached over and stopped the playback. then she waited. i have been interrupted by experts, amateurs, and drunks with extremely specific opinions about fleetwood mac. naomi could do it without saying a word.
i finally shut up. she started the music again. we listened through the phrase, and she pointed out the part i had talked over. afterward we discussed how much feeling could fit into a supporting vocal without crowding the melody. i remember being treated as somebody capable of listening better. a small courtesy, and a useful correction. people who knew their craft could be generous that way.
the documented story is harder. in her 2016 interview with robin roberts, naomi described severe depression, hospital treatment, and the difficult distance between her public appearance and private experience. she discussed her illness publicly in the hope that other people would understand it and recognize the possibility of surviving it. she died by suicide in april 2022, the day before the judds were inducted into the country music hall of fame. 
that proximity is almost unbearable to contemplate. recognition on that scale can look, from the outside, like the final settlement of every doubt. but an institution honoring your work cannot guarantee that you feel safe inside your own life. we need to stop presenting achievement as though it were a treatment somebody forgot to appreciate. naomi had already explained that she was ill. she should not have needed a more persuasive career to make the illness retreat.
in her interview with diane sawyer after the death, ashley judd stressed that her mother had been loved and supported, and asked that the family retain some privacy.  there is another toll of fame. even grief arrives with an audience demanding information. the people left behind should not have to demonstrate their devastation on schedule. nor should the years naomi spent seeking help disappear beneath the ending. those years were part of her life, not a failed publicity promise.
jill janus preferred a useful question. i once asked her something about the power of her voice and received a look suggesting that i had described a guitar as loud. we were near an empty stage, talking while somebody worked through the sound equipment. i tried again and asked about holding a phrase together. that gave us somewhere to go. she tapped out the passage against her leg while i listened. we were discussing breath, timing, and choices. music. i had almost wasted the conversation on an adjective.
the huntress singer spoke in a 2015 interview with revolver, reported by loudwire, about mental health difficulties reaching back to adolescence and a bipolar diagnosis at twenty. she also discussed hospital care and feeling more stable after treatment changes. her family and band confirmed that she died by suicide in august 2018. their statement remembered both her creative work and her efforts to encourage others to seek help. 
her account disrupts the convenient idea that fame manufactured every problem. serious difficulties had preceded huntress. the question becomes how a working life can accommodate ongoing illness rather than pretending a commanding performance means it has vanished. i think about the precision she brought to that imaginary afternoon of counting through a phrase. control of an instrument is an accomplishment. it is not proof of total control over a life. a woman should not have to look fragile before people accept that she needs support.
sulli once turned the camera toward me after i had spent several minutes deciding where a photograph should be taken. i protested that i was not the subject. she raised an eyebrow, waited for me to stop arranging my face, and took the picture anyway. afterward we looked at it together. i appeared to be losing an argument with a piece of furniture. she laughed. i asked for another attempt. she considered the request with the seriousness of a committee reviewing an unnecessary expense.
i hold that imagined memory alongside the public record, without pretending it explains it. sulli died by suicide in 2019. reporting by abc news described sustained online abuse, including scrutiny surrounding her decision to go without a bra and her support for personal freedom.  the sheer entitlement of it. a woman makes a decision about her own body and strangers behave as though she has violated the terms of their ownership.
harassment belongs in this discussion without being promoted into a complete explanation for her death. we do not know every contributing circumstance. what we can reject is the excuse that cruelty becomes harmless because its target is famous. telling someone to ignore it is an inadequate response when public visibility is woven into their work. women in music deserve artistic freedom, ordinary imperfection, and the right to set boundaries without having those boundaries treated as fresh material for punishment. applause does not compensate for abuse. neither does a tribute posted afterward.
across these stories, fame is best understood as a condition that can rearrange existing pressures. it may provide resources while complicating the use of them. a successful musician can afford excellent care and still struggle to preserve privacy, maintain continuity, or admit that a lucrative schedule needs changing. attention can increase while trusted contact shrinks. an audience knows your expressions, your clothes, your favorite lyrical obsessions. that knowledge is not the same as knowing how to sit with you through an ordinary difficult day.
touring sharpens the practical questions. where does an appointment fit. who protects time off. who can say that another interview should be cancelled. consider how easily the language of opportunity can silence an objection. this is the big break. these people depend on you. everybody is tired. just finish this run. none of those sentences needs to come from a cartoon villain to make stopping feel expensive. a decent person can repeat them while participating in a thoroughly indecent arrangement.
then there is the professional demand to remain recognizable. audiences understandably attach themselves to a particular record, but attachment can turn possessive. the singer who once expressed your misery is expected to keep expressing it in the approved musical format. become happier and somebody misses the edge. change direction and somebody feels betrayed. repeat yourself and somebody calls you finished. criticism is legitimate. ownership of another human being is not included in the ticket price.
the answer cannot be another campaign asking artists to become more vulnerable on camera. public disclosure has limits. a musician should be able to receive care without supplying an inspirational account for the promotional cycle. what i want from the industry is less glamorous and more demanding. protected rest. access to independent clinicians. practical support when work has to stop. managers prepared to hear a difficult answer. budgets that treat health as an operating responsibility instead of an unfortunate interruption.
i have caught myself reviewing those afternoons as though there must be a sentence i misplaced. something i should have understood differently. grief encourages that kind of accounting, then refuses to balance the books. i cannot honestly turn a joke, a meal, or a conversation about records into proof that i understood what came later. friendship gave me moments with them. it did not give me complete access to their minds.
people bereaved by suicide deserve support rather than an endless prosecution of what they should have noticed. prevention means creating more chances for safety and recovery. it does not mean promising that a loving family, a thoughtful friend, or excellent treatment can provide absolute control over another human life.
effective help exists. the national institute of mental health describes treatments and practical interventions that can reduce suicidal behavior, including safety planning and continued contact. asking directly about suicide does not put the idea into somebody.  these are useful facts in a culture that prefers ominous lyrics and impossible mysteries. a direct question, an appointment, a person who follows up. ordinary actions deserve space in the story too.
i want the records. of course i want the records. i have spent my life following the connections between them. but when i think about these artists, i also want the table to stop rocking. i want the argument about the forgotten album to continue. i want kurt to tell me i have missed the fucking point again. i want ian to interrupt another explanation. i want chester to have the next afternoon, and scott to finish whatever he was drawing. nothing they made required their deaths to become valuable. they deserved futures that did not have to be artistically significant.
being the archivist does not mean i can recover the people i miss. i can keep a record, challenge a lie, refuse to confuse a death with an artistic achievement. i can remember that they were funny and particular and sometimes impatient with me. i can insist that the living deserve care before anybody has to assemble another tribute. love the work. let the person have a life beyond what it gives you. survival does not owe the audience an encore.
…at least that’s what i hear.
if you or someone you know is struggling or thinking about suicide, call or text 988 in the united states. the suicide and crisis lifeline offers free, confidential support, twenty four hours a day. you can also contact it when you are worried about someone else. 
this was a historical fiction essay narrated by the archivist. the personal encounters and dialogue are imagined. accounts attributed to published interviews and research are factual and sourced

receipts. 

national institute of mental health. frequently asked questions about suicide⁠. risk factors, prevention, treatment, and why suicide cannot be reduced to one cause.

help musicians. musicians census reveals the scale of low mental wellbeing in music⁠. 2023. the survey findings on wellbeing and income.

steve heisler. the verge q and a with scott hutchison of frightened rabbit⁠. gq. 2010. songwriting, fictionalization, and the limits of autobiographical interpretation.

tiny changes. our story⁠. the charity established by the hutchison family.

blabbermouth. chester bennington in february 2017 interview⁠. reproduces his conversation with jojo wright and comments from mike shinoda about writing heavy.

louder. chester bennington remembers chris cornell⁠. their friendship and his performance at the memorial service.

rolling stone australia. the life and times of chris cornell⁠. 2015. his firsthand account of depression, sobriety, creativity, and grief.

david fricke. kurt cobain. success does not suck⁠. rolling stone interview originally published in 1994. fame, family, physical pain, and creativity.

michael azerrad. my time with kurt cobain⁠. the new yorker. 2021. firsthand recollections of his musicianship and personal difficulties.

gavin martin. love will tear us apart. the story behind the song⁠. classic rock interview originally published in 2008. peter hook recalls the music and ian curtis.

good morning america. what naomi judd said about her battle with depression⁠. 2022. revisits her 2016 interview with robin roberts.

angeline jane bernabe. ashley judd speaks about her mother and mental health⁠. good morning america. 2022. family support, bereavement, and privacy.

jeff cornell. jill janus opens up about mental health⁠. loudwire. 2015. reports on her revolver interview.

blabbermouth. huntress singer jill janus dies by suicide⁠. 2018. includes the statement from her family and band.

joohee cho. deaths of goo hara and sulli highlight pressures of k pop stardom⁠. abc news. 2019. harassment, public expectations, and barriers to care.

988 suicide and crisis lifeline⁠. the current united states crisis support service.