Mr. Mike: The Life and Work of Michael O'Donoghue by Dennis Perrin

Author:Dennis Perrin [Perrin, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

It wasn't a matter of dividing people into camps. There was no camp in Michael's camp. People were terrified. It was a serious thing to walk around with this genius hating you. It was not a pleasant experience. Michael was dangerous. Michael was serious. Michael was not joking about what he was doing. I mean, this was an angry genius. This was not something to fuck with.

Perhaps the one contributor most affected by the feud was Sean Kelly. During his early Lampoon period, Kelly divided his time between Montreal and Manhattan. When in New York, he, along with Anne Beatts, spent many recreational hours in O'Donoghue's loft. Once, their host produced some blotter acid that the three ingested before going to see samurai films. When they returned to the loft they spent the entire night on the building's roof. "Suddenly it was dawn," said Kelly, "and there we are wrecked out of our minds, at which point Michael decided that I was, in fact, a fox and not a human being." Kelly thought this amusing, and soaked in the peculiar observations of a hallucinating O'Donoghue.

Kelly never felt that he and O'Donoghue were "asshole buddies," but O'Donoghue was generous and Kelly appreciated his vulnerable side. After suffering what Kelly termed a "domestic catastrophe," he received a call from O'Donoghue, who offered assistance. "He was there for me. It was an experience almost unique in my life. It was very moving. There was nothing he could do, but it was the gesture; there was no bullshit to it." The downside to the relationship was that Kelly was married with kids. O'Donoghue was single and enjoyed his freedom. When O'Donoghue and Beatts visited Kelly in Montreal, they implored him to join them for a night on the town. Kelly said that he couldn't afford to go, to which O'Donoghue asked, "Baby needs a new pair of shoes?" Kelly replied, "Precisely." He did, indeed, have a baby—several, in fact—all in need of shoes. Nothing kills one's social life faster than parenthood.

Hendra was closer to Kelly in life experience. Both had a wife and children; both were fallen Catholics; both were part of the Lampoon's vital second wave. Their commitment to the magazine led to a strong friendship. The arrangement appealed to Kelly, as he enjoyed Hendra's company; but he also held O'Donoghue in high esteem. At the moment of the split, Kelly was faced with a decision he did not want to make. So he straddled the fence for as long as he could in the hope that conditions would change.

Simmons, too, wanted the atmosphere cleared, and he thought it best that Hendra be given a project outside of the office. Gerry Taylor and Blue Thumb Records had asked Simmons for another Lampoon album. Taylor was especially keen on the idea because Radio Dinner had helped boost ad sales and successfully marketed the Lampoon name. Since Hendra had put in more production work on Dinner than O'Donoghue, the new album was his to create.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.