I've got a story to tell—a story about a man who was a key
part of telling so many stories to so many people. I think it's OK for me to
tell it now.
It was October, 2006. a publicist from the Museum of Modern
Art got in touch with me. The museum was adding the video works of theResidents to the permanent collection and he wanted me to write something to
help promote the occasion. I jokingly responded that I would do so only if he
could get me an interview with the band. To my surprise, he said he'd see what
he could do.
I didn't expect anything to happen, not really. The guy
sounded (understandably enough) more like a publicist than a fan, and I suspected
he didn’t know that the band members’ identities were a closely guarded secret
and that they didn’t do interviews. They left the talking to their management, the
so-called “Cryptic Corporation.” My initial surprise was goosed a couple of
weeks later when he called me and said the band was at the museum and if I
could get there immediately, he’d introduce me.
I didn’t ask any questions. I ran outside and got a cab.
When I got to the museum, however, he stammered and apologized and explained to
me that he’d misunderstood, and that it was representatives of the band who
were available. He introduced me to Hardy Fox and I promptly got the game.
Standing before me was a Resident.
We sat in the museum’s screening room where a selection of
the band’s landmark videos would be shown that night and chatted at length. He
was pleasant and easy going. I asked him everything I could think to ask, all
the while trying to keep my scalp from blowing off and wondering what I was
going to do with this prized information, at that time still not known to most
fans.
And that’s when I got the game at a deeper level. There was no
reason to reveal that Hardy was a Resident. It was like, I reasoned, how in the
’70s all the rock mags had photos of the members of KISS (masked contemporaries
of the Residents, oddly enough) without their makeup on but none would run
them. What would be the point? Why ruin the game? So instead I held on to my
little secret.
A couple of years later—again in October, as it happens—I
got the chance to interview Fox again, this time on WFMU. I asked him questions
about the band and he answered graciously and at length. I knew we were talking
about him, not his clients, and I suspect he knew that I knew, but why say
anything? When you’re in the chocolate factory, you respect Mr. Wonka’s rules.
Mr. Fox was responsible for most of the sounds of the band’s
many iconoclastic records, increasingly so as time marched on. He helped to
forge a conception of mutant pop that inspired countless others. With the
Residents, he crafted a mutant meta-rock, pillaging and wreaking havoc upon
beloved hits of the ’60s. The band was often at the forefront of new
technologies, and evolved into one of the most unusual and enigmatic
storytelling troupes in the history of audio recording technology. But over the
span of five decades, they stayed true to their vision. Had they only released
a few singles—a cover of Hank Williams’ “Kaw-Liga,” for example, or Elvis
Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel,” or Ray Charles' "Hit the Road Jack," or James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,”
or the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” or the Beatles’ “Flying”—and
disappeared, they would have been a clever novelty. But instead, they deeply
mined an aesthetic, and continue to do so. They didn’t just make an artistic
statement, they stomped one out.
Fox quit the band a few years ago and subsequently outed
himself as both gay and a Resident. He wrote stories and continued to make music.
And then, on September 22, his website and Facebook profile were updated to
read “1945-2018.” In keeping with his and the band’s macabre humor, it didn’t
mean that he’d died, but that he expected to before 2019. He had brain cancer,
it turned out, and had just weeks to live.
And on the day before Halloween, it was announced that he
was gone, first in an email coming from his account and then in an official
announcement from the Cryptic Corporation. Because why die on Halloween? The
Residents always managed to stop short of the obvious.
Thanks for all the weirdness, Hardy.
