Mark Linkous R.I.P.

If you’ve never heard Sparklehorse’s It’s A Wonderful Life, go out and get it right now. Same thing for Good Morning Spider. Both are said to have some kind of inspiration from Sparklehorse leader Mark Linkous’s near death experience from 1996, but Linkous’ stated it wasn’t true. He admitted that much of the Spider material was written before he took a near lethal mix of anti-depressants, valium, and heroin while washing the whole thing down with some booze. He went unnoticed for over twelve hours before someone checked on him. They discovered him and his heart stopped while they lifted him up. His legs were pinned beneath him for so long that some of the muscles died.
In short, misery was a big part of Linkous’ music and-evidently-his life. I could have sworn that he’d found new reasons to live and create after the brilliance of those aforementioned albums was realized after the world nearly lost him. It now seems that this was a wrong assessment as Linkous took his own life this weekend and left us with a brief catalog of some pretty epic material.

I could only find a fan video of my favorite Sparklehorse song ever, "Apple Bed." I think that's PJ Harvey singing backing vocals, but I'm too lazy to go and get my copy now. Inspiration verse "You can be my friend/You can be my dog/You can be my light/You can be my fog." And then the pleading "Doctor please" comes in, like he's reconsidered life and wants to live.
Apparently, that wasn't so.