This Week in Birth - Mar. 16 to Mar. 22
By: Melissa Bessey
Welcome to round two of SoundProof’s weekly report on famous musician’s birthdays. In this segment we will discuss the lives of Billy Corgan, Melissa Auf der Maur and Flavor Flav in what has turned out to be a story of self stardom and tormented pasts. Though Corgan and Flav are known victims of abuse and abusers, respectively, on a positive note, we fill you in on some little known achievements of a woman by my own name and look at her connections to Billy Corgan; which landed her a gig as the bass player for Hole.
Flavor Flav (March 16, 1959): Flavor Flav is famous and infamous for both his career in hip hop and life tragedies, making it difficult to separate career achievements and personal struggles. (Yes, he’s also the guy who wears massive clocks.) In recent years he has been cast on the Surreal Life and his own reality TV shows, Strange Love and Flavor of Love but for anyone too young to know who he is other than the outspoken man who wears obnoxious tracksuits and oversized clocks; Flav is an original member of Public Enemy; one of hip hop’s first major socially conscious groups. Although Flav was the group clown, he was a good counterpart to Chuck D and his politically charged messages. He has struggled with drug addiction over the years, as well as abuse, which caused him to loose custody of his children. But dirty laundry aside, he is also a self taught musician who began to learn the piano by age five. Let us tinker on to discuss another self taught musician.
Billy Corgan (March 17, 1967): Smashing Pumpkins founder, lead singer and guitar player, Billy Corgan is a self-taught guitar player, poet and the originator of the "perpetually depressed or melancholic" look. Now, Corgan has suffered from massive depression in his life as a result of abuse as a child; however his image has become the springboard for commercial success with newer artists over the years. The Smashing Pumpkins were of major importance to the success of mainstream music throughout the ‘90s (and the soundtrack to my highschool antics with friends). Corgan also dated Courtney Love before she married Kurt Cobain and the two are rumoured to be together again. Couple or not, Corgan is currently in the studio helping Love with her next album.
Melissa Auf der Maur (March 17, 1972): When Hole needed a bassist, Courtney Love took the suggestion from her good friend Billy to hire a Canadian musician, Melissa Auf der Maur. Auf der Maur was not only the bass player from Hole but has toured with the Pumpkins and is an accomplished visual artist. Auf der Maur went to Concordia University where she studied Photography and over the years has actually had a fair amount of work published.
Next week: Just as exciting but with a little less emphasis on artists with troubled pasts.
