At the age of 16 Kristin Hersh was knocked off her bike, sustained a double concussion and started hearing music no one else could hear. This music blew in from the great beyond and bent her to its will. So Hersh formed a band, Throwing Muses, and sang songs in a trance, her head swaying, her gaze cast eerily out over the crowd. It was hard to tell whether the music was a response to her demons, a symptom of demons or – worst of all – the demon itself.
For devotees, this only made the Muses seem all the more exciting. The fact that Hersh was wonky, disturbed and in the grip of dark forces was taken as proof of authenticity and exoticism; as central to her appeal as those tremendous riptide vocals or her deft way with a guitar. But the singer saw it differently, and now recoils from those early albums. "My response when people tell me they listen to Throwing Muses is 'why?'," she says. "Whatever would you do that for? It's so ratty. So unappealing, so unattractive. I didn't like being there and I had to be there. Why would you show up?"
"Yeah, I hate music. Everyone knows that about me. Even my kids hate music. When they're watching a kids' show on TV, as soon as a song comes on, the TV is muted." She reconsiders. "Maybe hate is the wrong word. We can't bear it. The intensity of good music is too much to bear. And bad music is so offensive that that's also too much to bear. I'm in heaven when it's good, but that doesn't happen very often. And anyway, you don't want to be crying over the breakfast table. I don't want that life."
She is wary of the romantic notion of a link between great art and mental illness. Maybe, she concedes, in certain circumstances. But in the end the sums don't add up. "The disease is far more dangerous than the music is valuable."
