by Cooper, Kim
Did you see how far he fell and how he made us suffer?
Another boy in town at night he took him for his lover
And deep in sin they held each other
So I took a hammer, nearly beat his little brains in
Knowing God in Heaven would have never could forgive him
So I took a hammer and I nearly beat his brains in
Lance Bangs remembers feeling chills as Jeff sang this song, still the only post–Aeroplane composition he’s played in public. When he finished, “Everyone’s blown away and applauding and really supportive. And he goes on to do mostly solo versions of stuff from the record. Scott picked up a horn and went down the hall and into the bathroom, playing the horn parts so they were coming muffled out of the wall.” For other horn parts, Jeff encouraged the audience to sing them.
If “Little Birds” was the direction that Neutral Milk Hotel music was going in, Lance thought, there would have to be some major changes. “You can’t imagine where there’s room for cute, adorable Julian Koster to do some smiling toy instrument thing on top of it. There’s no room for that. And if you were to add a mournful Scott Spillane horn part—what you’re hearing is so much more direct and fucked up, that there’s not really room to take a step back and hear that. To me it was this weird delineation. It felt really natural when he did things solo before. It was a really amazing night, but it almost felt like things were coming to some weird close. It wouldn’t have shocked me to hear he was going to move. Because it always seemed like he was very transient and at any point he was capable of going away for a while to Chicago or New York or Texas or back to Ruston, or moving to the country or going overseas. It seemed like he at any point could take off. We were kinda hoping he’d stick around and that things would last.”
But it appeared that Jeff was rolling up the rugs on his career and without actually saying anything formal, disengaging from the crazy merry-go-round of touring, recording and talking with the press that had become his life. On New Years Eve, Jeff got up on stage at the 40 Watt early in the proceedings of a show featuring Elf Power, The Music Tapes and Sleater-Kinney’s Corrin Tucker. Hardly anyone was at the club as Jeff, with accompaniment from Scott and Julian, sang “Engine,” “Oh Sister” and “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.” This would be the last formal appearance of Neutral Milk Hotel.
And inside the myth machine, an alternate version of Jeff Mangum was constructed and given breath. This Bizarro World Jeff was a crazy recluse, a Syd Barrett for the late 90s. Fans who had found themselves deeply moved by Neutral Milk Hotel music felt personally betrayed by Jeff’s refusal to do the obvious, and follow In the Aeroplane Over the Sea with another album, another tour, another round of conversations with the press. The traditional narrative of desire goes something like boy writes songs, starts band, gets hit record and all his dreams come true. There’s no room in that blueprint for the boy to decide, “Hey, this isn’t fun anymore; I think I’d rather do something else.” But real life doesn’t have to follow a script. Kurt Cobain didn’t understand that he could just get off the merry-go-round—and of course it’s harder to quit when you’re indentured to a multinational corporate entity—but Jeff Mangum knew that he could, and that he must.
The legendary version of Jeff’s story has him losing his mind and becoming a shaggy recluse. In fact, he did withdraw from his social network for a time, apparently overwhelmed by the last year’s flurry and suffering generalized ill health. But at the heart of his troubles was the hard fact that his wants and those of his best friends were, for the first time in years, maybe ever, utterly opposed.
Laura Carter speculates that “he was in a position where all of his buddies wanted to keep going, and he wanted to drop out and be like Robert Wyatt—be a recluse and then come out with an album in ten years and shock everybody. We all were Robert Wyatt worshippers. It’s that character, someone who does something great and just does their own thing completely. People don’t really think about them, and suddenly they put out another great album. That was more what he was comfortable with. And the press called looking for him, and he was very evasive. He didn’t want to take the music to a true, professional level—like what Nirvana did. And it was amazing up to the very end! Never losing intensity. But I think that was the fear. He wanted to go out at its peak and not ride the peak out until it fades and then burns out. I think Jeff is instinctively an excellent business person. He might not know what the hell’s going on, but he’s got some sort of instinct for it that’s just good, the decisions he makes.”
At the end of 1998, Jeff found himself faced with an exceptionally troubling task. He was going to have to tell Scott and Jeremy and Julian that he wanted out. And he just couldn’t bring himself to say it. Laura, again, explains: “Here’s these people who have left jobs and suddenly are having success for the first time in their whole lives. How can you take that away from somebody who’s your close friend, and be like, ‘Uh, I don’t wanna do it anymore’? Those were the two ideas I saw being really hard for Jeff to handle. He just started shutting his friends out, shutting the press out, shutting everybody out. Scott would come over, ‘Let’s not play Neutral Milk songs, let’s just play music like we used to do,’ and he’d be distracted and just leave the room and go off to do something. He didn’t handle that very well, he didn’t talk to any of the guys or anything. He just freaked out and shut everybody out. He couldn’t tell his friends, ‘I love to play music, and we could keep playing music and be very successful, but I don’t want to!’ It’s just such a weird thing—if you love to play music, why would you be afraid of success?”
Gradually, it became obvious that Neutral Milk Hotel was not going to continue. The players drifted away to work on other projects, but because they were friends first, they all stayed in touch and collaborated on some of the most satisfying, if under publicized, projects of the Elephant 6 era, like the Flicker Orchestra, which provided live soundtracks to silent film clips.
When asked about why the band stopped playing, Julian Koster laughed, “It’s funny, but no one’s ever asked me if Neutral Milk Hotel broke up, and I wouldn’t know what I’d answer.” But it was a mistake to think that Aeroplane was the only thing that mattered in Jeff Mangum’s life, creative or personal, when “there’s so much created before it, there’s so much been created since. There’s no shutting off, there’s no end. Nothing stopped.”
The people who were there realized that the Neutral Milk Hotel era was over, and began to take an accounting of their time in the maelstrom. Laura Carter felt “it was a great, crazy adventure. I got to travel, do things I’ve never done before. All the things that we did together. There were personal struggles, fights for the shower, but that I did that in my life is just a total blessing. There was one point when I looked at Jeff at Bottom of the Hill, I think, and I remember walking across the stage to do my part and realizing, in all of my wildest dreams, it’ll be a landmark in my life. There was definitely a lot of good comradery. None of us were very skilled, and I felt like we all rose to the occasion and worked really hard at trying to become skilled really quickly. It was as if we knew the songs were so good that we had to do them justice, and we felt a great amount of pride and just stepped up to the plate. So when it did really all come together, we just couldn’t have been more happy.”
In the years following Aeroplane, Jeff began exploring his spiritual interests, reading Krishnamurti, traveling, spending time in a monastery and, as Laura saw it, becoming a more calm and centered person. In the summer of 2000, Jeff and his friend Josh McKay attended the Koprivshtitsa Festival in Bulgaria, a twice-a-decade confluence of thousands of traditional musicians playing simultaneously on various stages. The ambient sounds of the players were recorded and later issued as Orange Twin Field Works, Volume One. In early 2001, Jeff and Laura took a restorative trip to New Zealand that culminated in a live performance in an Auckland pub with their friend and host Chris Knox. At this show, Jeff played Neutral Milk Hotel songs and
spoke frankly about his recent breakdown. In November 2001, Jeff joined Will Cullen Hart and John Fernandes for an East Coast Circulatory System tour, where he drummed and sang, and giggled on the floors of the houses where they crashed, just like old times. Toward the end of 2002, Jeff (under the name Jefferson) hosted a radio show on New Jersey’s legendary free-form station WFMU. On these shows, he played original sound-collage compositions, music by his favorite artists and single notes that seemingly went on forever. After nine late-night shows he slipped away again.
But while Neutral Milk Hotel ceased to exist as a band, their influence continued to be heard in groups like the Decemberists and the Arcade Fire. And their audience grew, too, with an estimated 140,000 copies of Aeroplane sold by Merge since 1998, nearly 50,000 of those in the past two years. Without radio play, without a touring band, somehow the word keeps seeping out that this is a special record that deserves to be treasured and shared.
On the Elephant 6 Town Hall internet message board, fans who have their own bands came together to produce a tribute album, Fanfare for Neutral Milk Hotel, available for free download within the online community. Archival websites like Gavin Bachner’s Carrot Flower Kingdom compile bootleg info, visual reference material and discographies. In darker corners of the internet, fans who came to Neutral Milk Hotel too late to experience them in the flesh share thoughts and experiences.
Geoffrey George was in high school in Michigan when he first heard Neutral Milk Hotel, a couple years after they stopped performing. He and some friends were driving aimlessly out to a spooky old nunnery in the woods near Oxford. One of the guys in the car was an older brother, home from college where he worked at the radio station. He put In the Aeroplane Over the Sea in the CD player and for Geoff, the outside world just melted away. “Right away I knew there was something to it. You could feel this music—from the opening chords of ‘King of Carrot Flowers,’ the music vibrates with a strange thickness and it goes right into your guts. And then there’s Mangum’s voice, sharp and loud, telling stories that are frightening and cold and fascinating. It was like a strange old carnival, but it was also something I had never heard before in my life. We drove up to the nunnery, but I was too transfixed by the music to care. We didn’t speak much, and although we listened to the whole album, I didn’t once ask who the band was. The music had really affected me. For the next few days I couldn’t stop thinking about it and I wanted to hear it again. Some months later when we were visiting Matt’s brother in Ann Arbor, I finally asked what that album was and went right to Wazoo Records on State Street and bought it. I’ve since had to buy three separate copies because I’ve listened to it so much. I’ve heard (probably) all of NMH’s recordings, including a lot of live stuff, but nothing comes close to it. It will forever be one of the albums that changed the way I listened to music. I know that Jeff has probably written some great stuff since the album, but I realize it will probably never see the light of day. In a way, though, I like it like this. This sort of album—or work of art—is special on its own. It’s a onetime thing, and it ends up being more significant with all the mystique that surrounds it. You can tell the album is deeply personal and I don’t think Jeff expected it to gain the attention it has. I think it’s pretty admirable of him to be able to keep quiet about it. Most people would exploit the situation.”
On In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Jeff Mangum sings of wanting to save Anne Frank in some sort of time machine. When Jeff vanished, his voice suddenly silenced—much as Anne’s had been by death—similar desires rose in the hearts of his fans. Late one night in 2002, a young woman named Briana Whyte visited a Neutral Milk Hotel fansite called sadtomato and made a poignant post to the message board.
i want to build a hermitage in the woods for jeff mangum. he could communicate his wisdom to the world by way of a long tube that extends from a hole in the roof to a basement vent, whereby the sounds will be transcribed and broadcasted via am radio. people could live in tents about a mile away from his place, awaiting the completion of his masterpiece. when it is unveiled, the tentdwellers will spontaneously combust in holy terror, and the forest fires shall be a sign to the international community that neutral milk hotel, or something more inconceivably beautiful, has returned.
Later she read the Creative Loafing article in which her self-described rant was excerpted and felt foolish for having posted it. Jeff sounded so weary of people hounding him to release music again. Briana decided she was quite satisfied to have Aeroplane, and didn’t really need anything else from the man who had made it.
William Schaff, a visual artist from Providence, RI, was so inspired by “Holland, 1945” that he made a limited edition book of drawings and collage that fuses Jeff’s song with Anne Frank’s story and Schaff’s own emotional response to her death. In “I Am Listening to Here Where You Are,” Anne is represented with roses where her eyes should be, and when reincarnated as a boy still wears that lovely grin. Schaff himself appears as a conduit for the sorrows of the century, vomiting up the dead as do-gooders parrot “never again” slogans in front of a stack of televisions blaring post–Nazi atrocities. It’s a moving, intriguing interpretation of the material.
Jeff is alive, he’s sane and he’s well. He sometimes plays on his friends’ records, but he isn’t making Neutral Milk Hotel music, at least not for public consumption. It’s his life, and he’s living it.
The music that he made with his friends glows with a special light. The songs are beautiful and fascinating, the playing unpredictable and soulful, the production sympathetic and effective…but that’s not why so many people care about Neutral Milk Hotel and hold In the Aeroplane Over the Sea close to their hearts. The band and their music are manifestations of the rarest kind of love, a love that rescued a bunch of smart, emotional misfit kids stuck in redneck towns and hard-nosed cities, plunked them down in a series of warm and welcoming homes, trusted them to be themselves without fear of being mocked, let them all blossom. Aeroplane was Jeff’s flower, watered and sheltered and fed by his dear friends.
Julian Koster, whose life was immeasurably enriched by the souls he found in Ruston, has a message for young musicians and artists who are trying to find their way. It seems like he’s talking to his teenage self when he says, emphatically and sweetly, “I think what Elephant 6 meant for us is very simple: there’s something pure and infinite in you, that wants to come out of you, and can come out of no other person on the planet. That’s what you’ve got to share, and that’s as real and important as the fact that you’re alive. We were able, at a really young age, to somehow protect each other so we could feel that. The world at large, careerism, money, magazines, your parents, the people at the rock club in your town, other kids, nothing is going to give you that message, necessarily. In fact, most things are going to lead you away from it, sadly, because humanity is really confused at the moment. But you wouldn’t exist if the universe didn’t need you. And any time I encounter something beautiful that came out of a human somewhere, that’s them, that’s their own soul. That’s just pure, whatever its physicality is, if the person can play piano, if they can’t play piano, if they’re tone deaf, whatever it is, if it’s pure, it hits you like a sledgehammer. It fills up your own soul, it makes you want to cry, it makes you glad you’re alive, it lets you come out of you. And that’s what we need: we desperately need you.”
Neutral Milk Hotel live, left to right: Robbie Cucchiaro, Scott Spillane, Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, Jeff Mangum, courtesy Laura Carter
Julian Koster with bass guitar and Moog synthesizer, courtesy Laura Carter
The Landfill, 660 Reese Street, Athens, photo: Kim Cooper
156 Grady Avenue, Athens, photo: Kim Cooper
Grandma’s House, 986 North 7th Street, Queens, photo: David Barker
Jeff Mangum overlooking the ruins of the Sutro Baths, adjacent to the Musée Mechanique, San Francisco, 1996, courtesy Robert Schneider
Horn chart for “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” bridge (
“Oh how I remember you…”), courtesy Robert Schneider
Robert, Scott and Jeff in Denver during the recordings of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, courtesy Laura Carter
“Magic Radio,” a drawing commissioned by Jeff Mangum but not used for In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, courtesy the artist, Brian Dewan
Laura Carter and Jeff Mangum, courtesy Laura Carter
Unpublished Neutral Milk Hotel band photo, left to right on the couch: Jeremy Barnes, Julian Koster, Jeff Mangum, Scott Spillane, courtesy Laura Carter
Neutral Milk Hotel band photo, left to right: Scott Spillane, Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, Jeff Mangum, courtesy Laura Carter
World of Wild Beards handbill, 2001, courtesy of Laura Carter
*This seems to be as good a time as any for a brief footnote on the matter of the zanzithophone, the Seussian-monickered electronic MIDI saxophone (model NB01, available in black or silver) that was Laura Carter’s contribution to the Neutral Milk Hotel sound. The first one she used was a silver model belonging to Julian and Robbie Cucchiaro. The instrument, made by Casio in the mid 90s, was an unusual blend of digital and analog functionality. A musician would blow into the mouthpiece as with an ordinary horn, and finger the keys, but the sound came out of a little speaker on the bell. Unfortunately, the analog element was the instrument’s ruination—with nowhere for the spit and condensation to go, eventually every zanzithophone Laura played would fritz out, its transistor failing. Fortunately, a new one could be had for about a hundred bucks, or if you were lucky, someone would give you their old one. In Neutral Milk Hotel and Elf Power, Laura went through three.