Sad to hear that Larry “Wild Man” Fischer died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on Wednesday at the age of 66. Fischer, a mentally ill street musician who was at one time a familiar face on the Sunset Strip selling his songs for 10 cents apiece, recorded several albums (one produced by Frank Zappa), appeared on the Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In television series, and had a documentary made about him, dErailRoaDed in 2005.
He performed with Linda Ronstadt, Tom Waits, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Rosemary Clooney, Barnes & Barnes and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo. In 2004 Fischer performed “Donkey vs. Monkeys” on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Thomas Pynchon mentions Fischer in his 2009 novel Inherent Vice on page 155.
From The New York Times obituary:
Lawrence Wayne Fischer was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 6, 1944. From his youth on, whenever he was in a manic upswing — a state of intense creative energy he would call the “pep” — songs cascaded out of him.
At 16, after he threatened his mother with a knife, she had him committed to a mental institution. He was committed again a few years later.
After being released for the second time in his late teens, he lived mainly on the streets. Dreaming of becoming a famous singer, he performed in local talent shows.
He gained a small following and by the mid-1960s was opening for the soul singer Solomon Burke. He later opened for Alice Cooper, the Byrds and others.
Most of the time, though, Mr. Fischer stood on the Sunset Strip, where for a dime, or even a nickel, he would sing for passers-by. Mr. Zappa discovered him there and in 1968 released “An Evening With Wild Man Fischer” on his label Bizarre Records.
Mr. Fischer eventually fell out with Mr. Zappa, as he did with nearly everyone in his orbit. He languished until the mid-1970s, when he was almost single-handedly responsible for the birth of Rhino Records.
Rhino had been a record store in Los Angeles; Mr. Fischer, a habitué, recorded a promotional single, “Go to Rhino Records,” in 1975. Demand for it proved so great that it catapulted the store’s owners into the record-producing business.
I ran into “Wild Man” Fischer quite a few times over the years. The first time I saw him was on the third day I spent in Los Angeles in 1991. I didn’t have a car and so I took a bus to Tower Records. When I was going back to the hotel, I was sitting at the bus stop and a homeless vagrant started to get menacing towards me. It took me about a split second to realize who was confronting me and I thought it was probably a good idea to get away from him FAST, so I walked to the next bus stop. Sometimes you’d see him outside of rock clubs on Sunset or in the parking lot of the liquor store near the Chateau Marmont.
The last time I saw him was in 2004. My cell phone had run out of juice and I was making a call from a pay phone outside of a 7-Eleven store on Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood. As the line was ringing, I saw a stream of urine roll past me. I followed it to its place of origin and there I saw an unconscious Larry “Wild Man” Fischer pissing himself. When I saw the dErailRoaDed movie a few years ago, I realized that when I saw him, that this was at a time (shown in the film) when none of his family even knew where he was for several months. May he rest in peace.